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 11-18, 27 A.D.  Jesus and the Appointed Time of Firstfruits- The Year of the Lord’s Favor #28

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , ,

Week 9 ———  Jesus and the Appointed Times – Firstfruits
John 2:18-22

Last time, we talked about how God in creation set up appointed times of meeting, the moadim.  On the 4th day of creation, God made the sun, moon, and stars —to separate day from night, to mark the days and years, for signs, and to mark specially appointed times.

But historically, we Christians haven’t spent a whole lot of time studying the Older Testament.  We don’t read Leviticus – it’s too hard. We say that, but we must understand that Leviticus is what Jesus and the other Jews in the first century used as their first-grade reader.  While all the kids in my grade were learning about Dick, Jane, and Spot, Jesus was reading Leviticus.   Because our background on these appointed times is weak, we miss much of what God is saying in Jesus.

Leviticus 23 discusses eight appointed meeting times with God.  The first one mentioned is the most important, Sabbath.  Then, there are four spring times for meetings with God and three in the fall.  The first three in the spring all happen in the same week.

This year, the time for Passover and Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits begins this week.  It starts with the day of preparation for the Passover.  Before the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., this would be the time when the Passover lambs were slain and then taken home to roast.  Today, this preparation day is also the time to prepare the meal. The Passover would be eaten after sundown.   That day, no matter which day of the week, is a special Sabbath and the first day of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread.  The regular seventh-day Sabbath would begin as usual at the twilight of our Friday evening.  The Sabbath ends at twilight on our Saturday.  After the seventh-day Sabbath has ended, the Priest would go and harvest the dedicated barley and prepare it for the firstfruits offering, which would be given on Sunday morning.  This offering of Firstfruits always happens after dawn on the first day of the week (Sunday).  Unleavened Bread continues and ends with another special Sabbath on the final day.  Note there are 3 Sabbaths in this week and three of the four spring appointed times.

Firstfruits is a dedication of the barley harvest to God.  Barley is the first harvest in the spring.  The people have been living through the winter on their stored wheat.  If the wheat harvest was not good, they may have been running out of food at this point.  But even if they were near starvation, they were not allowed to harvest any of the barley until the first fruit offering to God was made.  They were not to touch the grain until the harvest was dedicated to God.  This was in recognition that the land and the harvest were God’s.  They were just stewards of His land; so though He deserved the whole harvest,  God had required only the first of the harvest.

In his book The Temple, Alfred Edersheim says the barley for the first fruit offering was cut by the priests in a particular field on the Mount of Olives on the day of the Passover sacrifice and gathered into ten standing sheaves.  The priests then crossed back to the Temple and to their homes before twilight to eat their Passover meal.  After the Sabbath during Unleavened Bread, they would cross back over to harvest the offering at twilight and spend the night preparing it for the wave offering the following day.1  Offering the firstfruits consecrated the entire harvest to God. If God accepted the firstfruits of the harvest, it meant God would accept the whole harvest.

This offering was the first day of 50 days (this day and seven weeks of days) that they would have a similar wave offering to God, marking the days until the Feast of Shavuot (Weeks).  There were seven weeks and one day.  The book of Acts calls this appointed time “Pentecost” from the Greek for ’50’.  We will discuss this feast later and the three appointed times of the fall:  The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and Sukkoth (The Feasts of Booths.)

What do these Old Testament feasts have to do with us?  

Passover.
 God established the Passover sacrifice and meal to remind the people of his great deliverance from Egypt.  They were slaves for 400 years.  God brought them out with power, with ten plagues or signs, the last being the death of the firstborn of Egypt.  The Passover lamb takes the place of the firstborn of Israel, and they are spared from death. For 1500 years, they celebrated Passover with the sacrifice of a lamb, recognizing the deliverance God gave them that day from death.  But they knew they needed a more complete deliverance from sin and death, and their prophets had told them that one day God would do something different. One day, a Messiah would come and be that perfect lamb of God not just to cover sin but to take it away; not just to spare them from death temporarily, but to defeat death— that it would not be a permanent separation from God.  And Jesus came to fulfill the Passover in his crucifixion. And  God arranged in his calendar to set aside Jesus to be our Passover lamb on the exact day and time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed.  This is not a coincidence.  This is God being sovereign over time.  He didn’t want his people to miss the relevance of Jesus’ crucifixion. For thousands of years, God has painted a picture of history.  We only have to trouble ourselves to know what he has done in the past to recognize what he does in the present and what he will do in the future.

Unleavened Bread.  
God established the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a memorial to the Jews who quickly escaped from Egypt with no time for their bread to rise.  Yeast became a metaphor for corruption and sin.  They were to remove the leaven (yeast) from their homes as a reminder of their ancestors’ journey and that God had called them to live differently and not to follow the sinful ways of other nations.  Jesus comes to Jerusalem just before Passover when everyone is cleaning out their homes and removing the leaven.  Jesus sees the sin and corruption in God’s house, the Temple, and cleanses the Temple.  Jesus becomes the Bread of Life, without leaven, for us.

John 6:47-51 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

Like the children of Israel, God has called us to live holy lives, free from sin (leaven).  We are not to be conformed to the world around us but to be transformed.

Firstfruits.  
The barley offered to God on the Sunday after the Sabbath after Passover represents the whole harvest.  If that portion is acceptable to God, the entire agricultural harvest is acceptable.  They do not touch the harvest until God receives his share first.  This is to remind them that everything they have is from God.  He is their life.   Jesus is resurrected from the dead at the same time as the firstfruits are harvested.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”      1 Cor 15:20

Because Jesus is resurrected, the whole world, the fields white unto spiritual harvest, are accepted.  He is our life.

John 11:25   “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

Again, look at how the spring feasts are fulfilled:
Passover –  Jesus, our Passover lamb, removes the curse of death and sin in his crucifixion.
Unleavened Bread – Jesus is the Bread of Life who took on our sin (leaven).  It is buried with him.
Firstfruits – Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection.  Because he has been raised, we will be raised.
Feast of Weeks – fulfilled in the Book of Acts (we will get there in just over a month).

The spring appointed times have all been fulfilled in Jesus.  The fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled.  I do not know when they will be fulfilled, this year or 100 years from now, but I have to think they will, like the spring feasts, find their fulfillment on the same day God ordained for the originally appointed times.  

Let me cover at one more aspect of Jesus’ resurrection.  On Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and sees the stone rolled away.  Then she tells Peter and John, and they all return to the tomb to see it empty. John tells us that he and Peter returned to where they had been staying, but Mary was left weeping in the tomb.  Jesus appears and reveals himself to Mary and then curiously says, “Do not touch me for I have not yet ascended to my Father…” (John 20:17).

Have you ever wondered why Mary can not touch Jesus yet? He specifically asks Thomas to touch him later. But Jesus needs to appear before the Father first. If you understand the appointed times, there is nothing surprising about this. Remember that Israel was not allowed to touch the barley harvest until the firstfruits were offered to the Father.  Jesus is not to be touched until he is presented as the firstfruit of resurrection to the Father.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”    1 Cor. 15:20

Because Jesus’s sacrifice is acceptable to the Father as our Firstfruit, we are all eligible to be harvested in resurrection as acceptable to our God.

Let me end with one of the Psalms of Ascent that those journeying to Jerusalem for these appointed times would sing as they travel.

Psalm 126:5-6   Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
  He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.2

The fields are white unto harvest.  The firstfruits have been offered in Jesus, now let us seek to bring in all the harvest.

  1. Edersheim, Alfred. The Temple (1874)
  2. Remember that sheaves in the Bible can represent people (as in Joseph’s dream).  Jesus said the fields are “white unto harvest.”  

April 11-18, 27 A.D.  Jesus celebrates the Feast of Unleavened Bread- The Year of the Lord’s Favor #27

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

Week 9 ———  Jesus and the Appointed Times
John 2:18-22

(April 11-18: Jesus observes the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Jerusalem. The Gospels don’t mention any specifics of his activity after the discussion with Nicodemus until April 20th, when he and his disciples leave Jerusalem.  So, I will take this time to provide some background on the special appointed times in God’s calendar and then discuss the feast of Firstfruits next week. This will hopefully give you time to catch up if you have gotten behind.)

Eclipse fever is over (until the next one.)   I am sure you got your fill of the apocalyptic predictions based on that regular occurrence of the moon blocking out the sun totally for 4-5 minutes.  This is not a new thing.  Some saw some Hebrew letters in the tracks of the path of the last three solar eclipses to cross the US.  (Hey, if you want to get some revelation from Hebrew letters, I can show you 304,805 Hebrew letters in my Hebrew Scriptures.  I can promise you that you will get a lot of good information there.)  But people have forever been searching for meaning from the sun, moon, and stars.

But is that why the sun, moon, and stars exist?  God tells us exactly why he created those in Genesis 1.

Gen. 1:14-15   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, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” 

So there are four reasons.  The most obvious one is “to give light upon the earth.” But their significance goes beyond mere illumination. Secondly, they are also “for days and years.”  The sun determines our days.  The sun ‘comes up’ and then the sun ‘goes down.’  Sunset is the beginning of a new day (as God defines it and the Hebrew Bible understands it — “evening and morning was the first day.”)   And how about ‘years’?   Because the Earth revolves around the sun in just over 365 days and because its axis is tilted, the sun rises and sets in a slightly different place every day.  It only sets in the due west on two days of the year, the spring and fall equinoxes.   Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, the pyramids in Egypt, and many other ancient monuments were constructed to align with the direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice.  People have forever realized how the sun marks out the years.

Thirdly, the Sun and Moon are there for signs (Hebrew ‘otom’).  Not the signs people want to see in an eclipse or a comet, but something more.  People have forever been trying to make “signs from God” out of natural occurrences (or trying to explain away the signs of God as natural occurrences.)  Comets were associated with the death of Caesar or the coming of the black plague in the Middle Ages.  During solar eclipses in ancient China, people thought an invisible dragon was eating the sun. So the Chinese would bang drums, pots, and pans and get archers to shoot arrows into the sky to scare the dragon away. Moments later, the sun would reemerge. So it must have worked! In the Middle East, in 585 BC, the Lydians and Medes were in a five-year war. A total solar eclipse occurred during the battle, and nations stopped fighting at once and forged a peace treaty.  In 1504, on Columbus’ final voyage, he got stranded in Jamaica.  He convinced the indigenous people that if they didn’t feed and take care of him, the gods would be angry.  He used an almanac to predict a lunar eclipse and told the people the gods would give them a warning and that the moon would disappear for a time that night.  The son of Columbus, Ferdinand, wrote:

“…with great howling and lamentation they came running from every direction to the ships, laden with provisions, praying the Admiral to intercede by all means with God on their behalf; that he might not visit his wrath upon them.”

What does the Bible say about people seeking signs?   Jesus said:

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

We will talk much more about this sign of Jonah later.   Jesus hints at this sign in our passage today:

John 2:18-22   “So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

But I think this verse from Jeremiah sums up the turmoil that constantly circulates during these routine celestial happenings:

Jeremiah 10:2-3  “Thus says Yehovah: “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are vanity.”

Jeremiah goes on to say don’t be afraid of idols either.  Like the fear of man from routine movements of the heavens, they are only inventions of man.  They “can not do evil, nor is it in them to do good.” (Jer.10:5).  But every big astronomical event brings out the sign-seekers.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.  If you want to know about real signs, check out the otom in the Bible.

In the Bible, these signs, “otom”, refer not to natural astronomical occurrences but to something beyond the ordinary.  For example, the plagues in Egypt are called ‘otom’.  One plague was darkness, but not the darkness of a solar eclipse that affects a small area for a short time. All of Egypt (except where the Hebrews were) was in total darkness for three days.  In Joshua 10, the sun and moon stand still during a battle for the length of a day.  In 2 Kings 20 (also in Isaiah 38), the shadow of Ahaz’s sundial goes backward ten steps as a sign.  Routine visible astronomical events are a wonder of God’s creation, but not miracles or signs.

Finally, the sun and moon are there for what the ESV calls “seasons.”  This is the translation of the Hebrew “moadim” in almost every translation.  That is unfortunate, as the actual translation is “an appointed time or place for meeting with God.”   The NIV is on the money here and translates moadim as “sacred times” and the Holman likewise as “signs for festivals.”   It could refer to a season only as a ‘sacred season’ or “appointed season” to meet with God.1  The primary two things this word refers to in the Bible are 1) The “tent of meeting” — where Moses met with God outside the camp (an appointed meeting time and place with God). Or 2)  the appointed feasts in the Biblical calendar.  — Lev. 23:44   “Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts [moadim] of Yehovah.”

Leviticus 23 lists eight appointed times.  There are four in the spring and three in the fall—but these are mentioned only after the most important appointed time, the Sabbath.  

Lev. 23:1-4   Yehovah spoke to Moses, saying,  “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts [moadim] of Yehovah that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts [moadim].  “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to Yehovah in all your dwelling places.

Again, the Sabbath is the most important appointed time for meeting with God.  We will discuss the Sabbath in Jesus’ teaching later.

We have already discussed the first of the spring appointed times, Passover (see ‘Behold the Lamb #22‘).  The Bible doesn’t call the day Passover but uses that term to refer to the sacrifice “Pesach,” which is eaten after twilight, thus the beginning of the next day, the first day of the seven days of Unleavened Bread. (We discussed unleavened bread in ‘Jesus Cleanses the Temple #25‘.)  The first day of Unleavened Bread is a special Sabbath, as well as the last day of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:7-8). So you can have 3 Sabbaths in the week of Unleavened Bread.2

The next feast is Firstfruits, which is on the day after the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. Several New Testament books refer to this feast. Understanding Firstfruits will deepen your understanding of why Jesus’ resurrection opens the door for our resurrection. So that is our topic for next week.

  1. Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon,  article for ‘moed.’ (‘Moed’ is the singular form, and ‘moadim’ is plural.)
  2. At this point, a very wise and careful reader may think about the final week of Jesus’ life and how they had to rush his burial as the next day was the Sabbath.  That led everyone to believe that Jesus was crucified on a Friday because the Sabbath starts at twilight on our Friday night.  But, if you know about Jewish feasts, you realize that every day after the Passover lamb is slaughtered is a Sabbath, so Jesus’ death did not have to be on a Friday.  We will go into more detail about this possibility next year.

April 12, 27 A.D.  Jesus and Nicodemus – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #26

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , ,

Week 9 ———  Jesus and Nicodemus
John 2:23 – 3:21

John 3:1-3   Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”   Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

We feel like we understand Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. After all, that encounter has the most quoted verse in the New Testament, John 3:16.  Yeah, we know all about this. These words are important to us. God put this here for us. But I want you to see it differently. These words were said for you but not to you.  We usually read it as if Jesus was talking to us, Christians in America in 2024.  But he was talking to a Jewish Pharisee in Jerusalem in 27 A.D.  Nicodemus doesn’t know what we know.  He hasn’t seen the football players with John 3:16 on their faces nor the guy with the crazy hair holding up the sign at the pro games.  He is not familiar with the term ‘born again.’  We have heard it all our lives.  But not only does Nicodemus not know what we know, we do not know what Nicodemus knows.  I want to look at that encounter again through Nicodemus’ eyes so we can fully understand what Jesus was saying and why Nicodemus was having so many problems with what Jesus was saying.

We usually ask why Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.  But I want first to ask why he came to Jesus at all.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”  John 3:2.

So, Nicodemus saw the miracles Jesus had been doing.

John 2:23   Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.

But John tells us Jesus did not ‘entrust himself to them’  — he didn’t tell them who he was.

So Nicodemus can’t figure out Jesus. He saw the miracles, but he also knew that two days ago, Jesus raised a ruckus in the outer court of the temple, taking a whip and driving out the people selling sacrificial animals and the moneychangers. So, who was this guy who could do miracles but also threw a fit in the temple? Jesus is a puzzle to him.

Nic is curious to discover who he is, but he can’t afford to be seen talking with the guy who made such a mess in the temple, so he comes in secret. He starts the conversation by giving Jesus the benefit of the doubt and perhaps a compliment, “I know you are from God.”  With such a gracious opening line, He is expecting Jesus to reply something like,  “Oh, thanks, Nicodemus,”  “I appreciate you saying that,” and “What nice words coming from such a respected member of the Sanhedrin.”  But instead, Jesus says:

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

What kind of response is that?  Apparently, Jesus is not going to waste time with pleasantries.  Now, Nic is puzzled and shocked.

Jesus starts, “Amen, Amen.”  This is a very Hebrew way of saying, ‘What I am about to say is a fundamental truth.’  Now, Nicodemus is taken aback because he thinks his spot is secure in God’s kingdom already.   The Pharisees were sure that all Jews would enter the kingdom through resurrection on the last day.  The only way that they could lose their position in God’s kingdom was to renounce their Jewishness and deny their faith.  He was shocked to hear that he was lacking.  He has been told all his life that his ticket was punched.  And of all things to say to a pharisee!  This Jesus fellow is sounding about as crazy as that John the Baptist fellow.

Remember how John the Baptist responded when the Pharisees came to him:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.   Matthew 3:7-9

John the Baptist says the same thing.  Being born a Jew is not a free ticket.  God can make children of Abraham out of rocks!  Now Nicodemus feels a bit insulted. But he can’t deny Jesus’s miracles, so he tries to understand what Jesus is saying, questioning him further.

“How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  John 3:4.

Nic is wondering how he can be born a second time, when Jesus was talking about a whole different kind of birth. (The Greek we translate as ‘born again’ carries with it the concept of birth from above – ‘born again from above.’)  Jesus tries to clarify it, saying that what you need to enter the kingdom of God is a birth of water and spirit—a natural birth of water and then a spiritual birth.

Nicodemus is not understanding.  Jesus says, “This shouldn’t shock you; the spirit is like the wind.  You can’t see it, but you can see its effects.

Nic still doesn’t get it.—it makes no sense to him, so he asks,  ”How can this be?”  Jesus says, “Wait a minute, you are the great teacher in Israel, and you don’t understand this?”  It is like he is asking Nic, ‘Haven’t you ever read the Bible?’ (He will say this to other Pharisees later on.)  He tells Nic, ‘If you can’t understand how God works on earth, then you’ll never understand the stuff of heaven. You aren’t even getting the easy stuff. How will you ever understand the more difficult things? ‘

We have to stop here.  Why was Jesus expecting Nic to already know about this?  Nic was supposed to know the Old Testament, and the idea of regeneration by the Spirit is not an uncommon theme in the Old Testament (see Isa. 44:3; Isa. 59:21; Ezek. 11:19, 20; 36:26–27; Joel 2:28–29; Ps. 51:10).  Jesus expected the great teacher of Israel to understand these things. Nicodemus, of course, was not alone in this shortcoming. Jesus accused other Pharisees of being people who claimed to see but were, in fact, blind (9:39–41).  Jesus expected Nic to remember that God would do something new, something that involved God’s spirit—a new heart and a new spirit—a spiritual rebirth.

Jesus presses on, while Nic is trying to absorb this.  He is going to throw Nic a bone. Nic is a scholar of the Old Testament, so Jesus will give him a remez.  Remez is Hebrew for ‘hint.’  Rabbis do this all the time. They use some phrase from scripture and expect you to know the scripture, grab that context, and use it in what they are saying.  This is what Jesus does on the cross. He quotes the first line of Psalm 22, expecting you to know the Psalm. If you do, you will understand what is happening at the crucifixion.  We do this also with movie quotes. For example, if you were in an unexpectedly odd situation, you might say to your friend, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” You expect them to know the context of the quote and pull that context into what you are saying.  So here is the hint Jesus gives Nicodemus:

“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” John 3:13.

Did you catch the remez?  In case you’re a little behind on studying and memorizing your Older Testament, let me help you. Nic knew there was a verse that asked, “Who will ascend into heaven..” 

Deut. 30:11-12   Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.   It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”

Let me make sure you know what Nic knows: Remember that Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell address to the people he has spent the past 40 years leading to the land he will not enter.  He desperately wants them to follow the rules that God has given them.  He reminds them if they do well, they will prosper as a nation, but if they do not keep God’s laws, his Torah, then they will not prosper.  (And we see that in their history.)  Here, he tells them that the instructions God gave them are not hard to keep. It is “not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.”  It is not so complicated that we have to send someone up to Heaven to get an explanation and then come back down here and explain it to us.  It is “in your mouth and in your heart.” That is, you already know it; this is easy stuff.

Jesus says the same thing later in his ministry:  

Matthew 11:28-29  “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”1  

And we see it also here:

 1 John 5:3  “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”

Contrast that with what Jesus says about the Pharisees’ teaching:

Matt 23:4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders,

They made it hard — Nicodemus was a member of the group that made it hard. These Pharisees made additions to the law that God gave on Sinai.  They call it the ‘Oral Law’; Jesus calls it “the traditions of men” (Mark 7:8).  Their point is to build a fence around the Written Law to keep people from breaking it.  It is like guardrails on a road.  You don’t want someone to run off the road on a curve and fall off the mountain, so you put up a guardrail.  But it is like the Pharisees came along and said, ‘Well, you don’t want anyone to hit that guardrail and scratch up their car, so let’s put a guardrail in front of that guardrail to protect it.  And eventually, you can’t drive on the road for all the guardrails.  For example, if the written law says, “Don’t work on the Sabbath,” then the Pharisees reasoned that they needed to strictly define work so people wouldn’t accidentally break the law.  But these additions to the law made life difficult for everyone.  Having a day of rest is wonderful, God’s idea from Genesis 1.  It is a gift to us.  But the Pharisees made it very hard to keep all their Sabbath laws.  Let’s look at how that works today.

Building a fire was defined as work.  If you can’t light a fire on the Sabbath, you can’t flip a light switch because there is a little spark when you do.  This means you also can’t start a car, even an electric one.  So you walk.  But you can only walk so many steps; one more than that is a sin.  Carrying stuff is work, so you can’t carry anything outside your house, like a handkerchief in your pocket or your house key.   You can’t tear; tearing is work. So, for the Sabbath, you can buy toilet paper that is pre-cut and folded.  When I was a Pediatric resident at Boston Children’s Hospital, we lived in Brookline, which was 90% Jewish.  Many houses had two refrigerators, two sinks, two sets of pots and pans, two dishwashers, and two stoves.  Why?  Mixing meat and dairy products in the same meal, container, or storage was not okay.  My friend had to wait 6 hours after eating any dairy product before he could have any meat product.  Where did they get the idea of not mixing meat and dairy?

Exodus 23:19: Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk (also in Exodus 34:26, Deut  14:21).  This was a common Canaanite practice as part of their sacrifice to ensure the fertility of the land. God forbade this because it was idolatry.  

I am not your rabbi.  Jesus is your rabbi.  You fall under his teaching.  My job is to help you understand his teaching.  His yoke is easy.  I do not want to make it harder.  I will go out on a limb and say it is not idolatry to eat a cheeseburger.  And I am not saying this to poke fun at my Jewish friends.  I deeply respect anyone who strives to meet the obligations God places on them.  But my understanding of the Scripture falls more in line with the Karaite branch of Judaism that follows only what was in the Scriptures and doesn’t follow the rabbis’ additions to the law (Oral Law.)  And God knows, we Christians have done the same thing, adding our own ‘traditions of men’ to the scripture and holding them to the level of Scripture, so let’s not throw rocks. (Did you get that remez?)

Moses and Jesus pointed out that following God’s instructions is not hard. The scriptures were written so that a young child should be able to hear and understand them. Any eight-year-old child should be able to listen to them and know what to do just by hearing them read once.  

Deuteronomy 31:9-13  “So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.”

Every seven years, they would read the first five books of the Bible to the gathered nation. Does that seem impossible? Actually, you can read those five books in Hebrew in about 12 hours (English would take 14 hours). You can read the entire Bible in 75 hours, and all but six individual books of the Bible can be read in three hours (which happens to be the amount of time the average American watches TV every day).

But wait, if it is so easy that a ‘little one’ can understand it, why is it not so easy for me to understand it today?

  1. It was written 2-3000 years ago in a language you can’t read to a culture that is incredibly foreign to you.  Everyone then knew about the ‘young goat in the milk’ thing because it was all around them.  It turns out that the life of nomadic shepherds 3000 years ago in the Middle East may not make much sense to engineers in 21st-century America.  They use idioms we have no idea about. (I’m sure if we said we ‘got up on the wrong side of the bed’ to a shepherd in Jesus’ day, he would be a little confused.)
  2. The Bible contains different types of literature. The Bible contains history, law, poetry, songs, wisdom literature, prophecy, personal letters, and apocalyptic literature. You don’t read a book of poetry the same way you read a history book. The Chronicles of Narnia is a great fiction book by C.S. Lewis, and it has some beautiful Christian messages in it, but you would never take the talking lion literally.  Yet many people read the apocalyptic literature in the Bible, like Revelation, and take it very literally even though it is not a history book.
  3. We don’t know the history or the land. The people Moses was teaching had just left Egypt, where their people had lived for 400 years. They understood Egyptian mythology, culture, and temples—that’s all they knew about temples and worship. God used their baseline knowledge as a starting point to teach them proper worship. But if you don’t know the starting point, you can’t understand what God is saying to them.  Many people read the stories of the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000 and think they are the same story, but John made a math error.  Why are they different?  They are very different because of where they happen.  The 4000 occurs in the Decapolis, a place with mostly Gentiles.  But you don’t know that unless you do a little reading.
  4. Sometimes, we are the problem.  We have preconceived ideas that we don’t want to let go of.  That is why Nicodemus had trouble understanding the ‘born again from above’ thing.  If you think you are a lock to get into heaven because you were born Jewish, then you may not want to hear that is not enough.  If you have been told for 400 years that the Messiah is coming as a military leader, then when it doesn’t happen that way, you have to be open-minded enough to see it.
  5. We aren’t willing to study the Bible as we were taught.

  Acts 17:11  Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

They listened eagerly to hear the message. But they didn’t just listen and go about their business. They heard Paul speak and then took the time to go through the Scriptures to see if what he was saying was true. They examined the Scriptures every day. They talked about them as they went about their lives. If you don’t do this when you hear a sermon, then I guess you think your preacher is better than Paul. Be a Berean! Study the scriptures for yourself.  

So Moses said: “It is not up in heaven, so you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” And Jesus said to Nic, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”  Do you get the remez now?  The point is that (1) God has clearly taught us what to do.  (2) It is not hard to understand or do.  and (3)  But since you Pharisees have found a way to make it hard, then I am the Messiah who has come down from heaven to explain it to you and show you how to live it correctly.  This is a claim of divinity.  Nic, did you want to know exactly who Jesus is? Well, here it is: he is the guy from heaven, Daniel’s Son of Man, the Messiah.

And because Jesus desperately wants Nicodemus to understand this, he gives him one more well-known Scripture reference to drive it home:

John 3:14  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Now, this is an odd one.  Jesus comparing himself to a snake is a shocker.  Let’s look back at the story.  The children of Israel are nearing the end of their journey in the wilderness.  The country of Edom will not let them pass through, so they have to go around — it is a long detour that means an extra several months of walking.  They are discouraged. And they are tired of walking.  And the temptation to murmur gets the best of them.  (When does temptation strike?  At your weakest.)

Once again, they begin complaining to God about the food. We have talked about this—murmuring, complaining about your circumstances—this is sin. It is more than ungratefulness; it is denying the goodness of God—faithlessness.  

This will be the last time they complain about the food.  This is strike three (another remez.)  

Numbers 21:6   Then Yehovah sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people, and many Israelites died. 

This is the wrath of God against a people who continue to sin over and over.  It is a curse in the form of the animal who was cursed in Genesis 3.    It brings death — the wages of sin is death.

How do the people react?

Numbers 21:7   The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against Yehovah and against you. Pray that Yehovah will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

It’s incredible how people run to God for help when disaster strikes—to the same God they were complaining about just yesterday.  We saw this happen after 9/11  when all of the churches were full (for a brief time).  But God does not take away the snakes.  The snakes are still there, biting people, filling them with poison that will cause their death.  He doesn’t remove the snakes, but he provides a way to remove the curse of death.

Numbers 21:8-9   Yehovah said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”   So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Does it seem odd that Moses would make a copper/bronze snake2 and put it on a pole? 

It was not odd at all to Moses and his people because they understood the context. We don’t know what they knew, but we have some context they didn’t have at the time.

The snake, one of the gods of Egypt, was often worn on the headdress of Pharaoh as a sign of power. If you defy Pharaoh, you will die, and you will die the most agonizing death Egypt knows — death from a cobra bite. In Egypt, this was a sign of the power of death. You fear Pharaoh because he can kill you.

So God tells Moses to turn this sign of death into a sign of deliverance from death. The people would look at the serpent on the pole and see that God has provided a means of deliverance from the curse of death they deserved.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Son of man must be placed on a pole and lifted up.  People can look to him to see that God has provided a means of deliverance from the curse of death.  A curse they brought on themselves due to their sin.  So God takes the cross, the symbol of Roman power over the Jews.  Rome holds the power of life and death over you. And Roman crucifixion was the symbol of that power.  Like the cobra, the most cruel, agonizing death Rome knew of.  You fear Rome because it can crucify you.

 Now Jesus does what Moses did.  He takes this symbolic representation of pagan control over life into a vehicle of healing through the One true God.  The symbol of Rome’s power is converted into a sign of Yehovah’s grace, just as the symbol of Egypt’s power was converted into a sign of Yehovah’s grace and healing.  And in both cases, the recipient must look upon that pagan symbol and see something new; not a sign of the power of pagan gods but a sign of the authority of Israel’s God.

Jesus is trying to connect the dots for Nicodemus.  The serpent brings death.  It was the Accuser, in the form of a serpent that tempted Adam and Eve and brought death into this world.  As Yehovah told Eve in Genesis 3, one day, one of her descendants would crush the snake. Jesus crushes the serpent by disarming him, removing his weapon against us, that is death.

This is how much God loves the world, Nicodemus. And we come to that verse you already know, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”  The word ‘world’ in Greek is ‘kosmos,’ from which we get our word ‘cosmos.’  God is not just redeeming people; God is redeeming all of creation. And if you have memorized 3:16 but don’t know 3:17, please add that one to your list.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  John 3:17

Jesus’ church has messed up so many times, thinking its job was to go around condemning everyone of every sin (well, of the ones they don’t do). Jesus said he wasn’t there to condemn; he told the woman caught in adultery he didn’t condemn her.   He was on a mission to save the world, not condemn it.  If you find yourself speaking words of condemnation instead of words of salvation, then do you think you are better than Jesus?  We are condemned already; we know we are condemned.   The church should not be known for telling everyone what they are doing is bad.  We should be out telling everyone what God has done that is good.

And it will be Nicodemus’ friends, his cohorts in the Sanhedrin, that will condemn.  They will condemn the only one who never deserved it.   But it will be Nicodemus who will speak up for Jesus.  It was in the fall, about six months after Nicodemus first encounters Jesus, that charges are first brought up against Jesus in the Sanhedrin.  And Nicodemus stands up and says,

John 7:51  ”Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” 

Nicodemus, along with Joseph, his fellow member of the Sanhedrin, will arrange for Jesus’s honorable burial. 

John 19:39  ”And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.”

We don’t know exactly when Nicodemus finally understood.  It may not have been until Jesus was ‘lifted up,’ and he recalled Jesus’ words.  But as Moses and Jesus said, it really wasn’t that hard, once you drop your preconceptions and biases.

Sometimes we are like Nicodemus.  Sometimes, God is trying to tell us something, but we don’t get it.  Maybe it is because we don’t know our Bible, or we don’t have time to read it, or we don’t take the time to dig into it and really study it.  But often it is because, like Nicodemus,  we read the Bible with a closed mind, looking for what we think we already know.  We read it through the lenses of our preconceived doctrines and traditions.  Are you willing to forget what you think you know from tradition and approach the Bible with eyes to see?

Moses said it’s not hard; even a child can understand it.  You don’t have to have someone come out of heaven to explain it.  But after hundreds of years of teachers getting it wrong, someone did come out of heaven to explain it.  Jesus said he didn’t come to do away with what God had already said (the Law and the Prophets), but he came to bring it to its correct conclusion, to explain it fully.3  And then he sent his Spirit to be with us, just as the prophets had foreseen, to comfort and guide us.  Let us all seek to diligently study God’s Word with eyes that are not clouded with preconceptions and thousands of years of man’s tradition, but let us study using all the resources God has given us under the power of His Spirit that lives in us.

1.  This is a loaded verse and there is a lot for us to unpack later.  For now, just know Jesus ‘yoke’ is God’s instruction that binds us together so we can do the work we have to do.

2.  The Hebrew can mean either bronze or copper, but copper is much more likely in this area.

3.  This is why, in “The Chosen,” Jesus says, “I am the Law of Moses.”  He is the author and embodiment of the Law and the Prophets, and he came to explain them and fulfill their meaning to us.

April 10, 27 A.D.  Jesus Cleanses the Temple – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #25

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 8 ———  Jesus Cleanses the Temple

John 2:14-22

Jesus and those traveling with him have just completed a 5-day walk covering 94 miles from Capernaum to Jerusalem.  The last part of the journey is all uphill, going up in altitude from near the earth’s lowest point (the Dead Sea) in the Rift Valley to the mountains of Jerusalem, a gain of over 3700 feet.  The goal of the pilgrimage was the Temple, and in Jesus’ day, the rebuilding of the second temple under Herod was grand.1 This massive marble structure gilded with gold must have been a sight, especially for those living in the ‘back country’ of Galilee.  

Jesus entered the temple area on this day, 1997 years ago. However, his attention is not focused on the massive structure in the center of the courts but on the commotion in the outer courts.   

This would happen in the “Gentiles Courtyard.”  Note the size of the footprint of the Temple Mount complex (about 37 acres) in comparison to a modern football field.  

Again, Jesus is arriving for the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as commanded several times in the Bible.

Lev. 23:4-8  These are the appointed feasts of Yehovah, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them.  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.”2

Unleavened bread, in Hebrew, ‘matzah,’ means bread not made with yeast.  This is to remember when the children of Israel left Egypt in a hurry and did not have time to make bread that would rise. 

Exodus 12:34    So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders.

Typically, they would keep a small amount of their old yeast bread (their ‘starter’) and mix a small portion in with the new dough.  The yeast would spread throughout the entire dough. As the yeast feeds on the sugars in the dough, it creates gas bubbles that cause the dough to rise.  Yeast (leaven) is often used in the Bible as a metaphor for sin or corruption.  (It is also used in Hellenistic literature as a metaphor for corruption.)  

Matthew 16:6-12 “Beware of the leaven [teaching] of the Pharisees.”  

Exodus 13:7  Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen with you, and no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory.  

Based on this scripture, before the Feast, there was a great effort to remove any trace of leaven from their homes.  This was a very serious spring housecleaning.  Everything and every surface of the walls and floors were scrubbed.  Cooking pots and utensils were boiled in water.  This still goes on in modern Israel in Orthodox Jewish homes today.  It has become more challenging to rid modern businesses of all the leaven.  For example, grocery stores and factories that produce leavened products like bread or beer can’t just destroy their stock and shut down and clean their equipment.  So, what they currently do is use an interesting legal loophole. For the past 25 years, the State of Israel has sold the entire stock of food items and related goods to one Muslim man, Hussein Jabar.  He pays ~$14,000 to Israel as a down payment.  The contract says he owns the products and has ten days to pay the remainder (~300 million dollars) to complete the transaction. This way no Jewish people would own any yeast products. He is also given the keys to the premises.  Every year, he fails to pay the remainder by the end of the Feast so he ‘returns’ all the property and receives his down payment back.3

So, every house in Jesus’ day was thoroughly cleaned—all but one.  Jesus enters the temple and sees God’s house is full of corruption.  So Jesus takes it upon himself to do a little house cleaning.  Did you realize that Jesus drives out the money changers and the people selling animals twice in the scriptures?  Did you know that the two events are the exact same time of year?  Both times are immediately before Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  Jesus is symbolically cleansing the leaven from the temple.

John 2:14-17  “In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Why are money changers in the temple? The annual Temple Tax began as an offering for atonement, a ransom of the firstborn (all of Israel is God’s firstborn). A census was taken of the people ransomed from Egypt. (The census is where we get our names for the Book of Numbers.)

Exodus 30:12 -15  “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to Yehovah when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to Yehovah. Everyone who is numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, shall give Yehovah’s offering. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when you give Yehovah’s offering to make atonement for your lives. 

It became an annual offering, as seen in 2 Kings 12:5-17 and Nehemiah 10:32-33.

The offering had to be paid in a specific monetary unit: shekels from Tyre.  Some have said that was because other coins had ‘graven images,’ but the Tyrian shekel had the image of a god.  The real reason was that the Tyrian Shekels were more pure silver.   (Roman coinage was only 80% silver, and Tyrian coins were 94% or more.)  The money changers referenced in the New Testament Gospels (Matt. 21:12 and parallels) provided Tyrian shekels in exchange for Roman currency, at a cost, of course.  The current value of this amount of silver is about 27 dollars.

Then, there were those selling animals for sacrifices.  The original reason is that people traveling to Jerusalem would not have to carry the animals long distances but could purchase them after arrival.  There was a place originally designated for these purposes outside the temple proper at what is now the Western Wall.  Presumably, these businesses were moved inside the temple by Annas (the High Priest before Caiphas) so he could keep an eye on them and ensure he got his cut of the profits.  Of course, the animal you brought would not be deemed “without blemish” when inspected, so you would have to purchase another that was deemed ‘perfect’ at a premium cost.  The ‘imperfect’ animal would be taken in trade and presumably recycled later as newly deemed ‘perfect.’  It was quite the business model.

John quotes Jesus as saying “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”  In the passages in the other gospels, when Jesus replays the driving out of these traders, he quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah,  “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” Mark 11:17, quoting from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11.

The Greek word for ‘robbers’ is ‘lēstai,’ which can mean ‘robber, bandit, or insurrectionist.’  It is the same word used in Matthew 27:38 “Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.”  But Rome did not use the punishment of crucifixion for robbers or bandits.  Primarily, crucifixion was used for Romans who committed treason or non-citizens who committed rebellion or insurrection.  Indeed, the charge Pilate gives Jesus is insurrection.  So those two beside Jesus at his crucifixion are not robbers but lēstai, insurrectionists.   Then, overturning the tables in the temple courtyard is not about robbery but about those rising up against an authority.  Then, who is the authority that the guilty is attempting to overthrow?  The authority Jesus is defending is God himself, and the rebels are those attempting to usurp God’s authority, the priests and temple rulers.

In 2024, Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread begin in less than two weeks.  If yeast represents sin, it may be time for all of us to do a little spring cleaning. God’s temple must be kept clean.   “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16.)  Ask Yehovah to look deep into your life, in all the corners and crevices, and remove all that hinders us from being worthy vessels for his service.  And if you have given Jesus authority over you, let us pray we never are insurrectionists, attempting to regain that authority over ourselves.

  1. Some sections of the temple were still under construction and were officially completed between 64 and 66 A.D. The Romans destroyed the Temple just a few years later, in 70 A.D.
  2. Note that the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the last day are special Sabbaths.  In a week when the first day falls on a day other than the seventh day of the week, there can be three Sabbaths in that week.  This will become important next year when we consider the Sabbaths in the week that Jesus is crucified.
  3. https://www.timesofisrael.com/meet-the-arab-israeli-who-buys-all-of-israels-hametz/

April 1, 27 A.D.  The Wedding at Cana – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #24

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

Week 7 ———  The Wedding at Cana

John 2:1-11

John 2:1-11   “On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.  Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.   And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it.   When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

“And the third day” is a puzzling phrase unless you understand how the Israelites named the days of the week.  Only the 7th day got a name, ‘Shabbat’ (Sabbath), which means “come to a stop, cease, rest.”  The other days of the week are just named after their order.  The first day is our Sunday; the second day is Monday.  So the “third day” is Tuesday.   According to Jewish tradition, Tuesday is the best day for a wedding.  The reason is that Tuesday is ‘doubly blest’ — the only day of creation in which the Bible states “and God saw that it was good” twice.  (Seriously, that is the reason.)  So we know the wedding was most likely on a Monday night.  Wait a minute,” you say, “didn’t you just say the third day was Tuesday?”  Ah, but this is a Jewish marriage.  And Jewish culture counts the days beginning at sunset, so our Monday night is the beginning of their third day.  Why do they count the day starting at sunset?  It all goes back to Genesis (doesn’t most everything?).  “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Genesis 1:5).  So Jesus is there for the Monday night wedding. Wedding celebrations usually lasted seven days, but Jesus didn’t hang around for the entire celebration.

How long did he stay?  Long enough for them to run out of wine.  Jesus departs the wedding with his family (mother and brothers) sometime between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning.  It is about 32 miles from Cana to Capernaum and “down” to Capernaum, a drop of about 700 feet.  The journey would take two days, and they would want to arrive in Capernaum early enough on Friday to have time to prepare for the Sabbath.  They are returning to Jesus’ home base of Capernaum (likely staying at Peter’s house [or Peter’s mother-in-law’s house]) before they undertake the long journey to Jerusalem for Passover on the day after Shabbat.  So they likely left Cana either Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

Running out of wine at a wedding celebration is a major social faux pas by the bride’s family. People will be coming and going for the seven-day celebration, and in this culture, you do not have a joyful celebration without wine.  We can only guess why Mary relates this information to Jesus.  Has he been in a habit of performing miracles for social reasons before?  I doubt it.  Is Jesus’ family part of hosting this wedding?  Possibly.  We just don’t know.  But Jesus’ response to Mary makes it clear he feels like she has asked for his help.  In English, Jesus’ reply to Mary sounds harsh, but it is not.  He uses the same term when he tells Mary, “Woman, behold your son,” about John at the crucifixion. 

Jesus says, “My hour has not yet come.”  You will see this phrase several more times in John’s Gospel.  (John 7:6, 7:30, and 8:20). when the time has come for Jesus to go to the cross, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  Jesus is on a schedule. He has tasks to complete before he allows the Jewish authorities to put him to death.  There is a plan, and it is the Father’s plan. 

As I have said before, whenever the Bible gives you an unexpected detail, it is almost always very important to the message.  Why do we get so much information about the water jars?  They were the expensive kind, stone, not clay.  Stone has to be carved from a solid piece of rock.  And they were big and heavy.  These are not jars you carry around with you.  They would have been 26-32 inches high and 16-20 inches in diameter.  Stone jars were used for ritual purification as they were non-porous and could be cleaned well.  A clay vessel that became contaminated (unclean) would be shattered and thrown away.  Why would one home have so many of these jars?  Some have suggested that it could be the home of a priest or pharisee, who would be more interested in ritual purification.  We do know that some priestly families lived in Cana.

Some people make a lot about the number of jars.  Six can be a significant number. As seven is seen as the number of completion, six can be seen as the number of incompletion or imperfectness.1 If that were the case when Jesus performed his miracle, it wouldn’t have remained six.  Sometimes, the number is six because there were six stone jars.  And we presume John is present here as an eye-witness.  (We are told that disciples were present.  Andrew, John, and Peter have been with Jesus for a few days, though he won’t officially call them as disciples for a while. Perhaps Philip and Nathaniel are also here, but none are mentioned by name.)  Exactly six stone jars of this size were found in the remains of the kitchen of a first-century house in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem that was excavated in 1970.  The house was burned in the fire started by the Romans during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  It was located in the section of Jerusalem where the priests lived.  It is now a museum called ‘The Burnt House Museum’ (pictures below.)

So what is the significance of Jesus using water jars that were for ritual purification?  These would be for ‘netilat yadayim’ or ‘washing hands with a cup.’2  Halakha required hand washing before and after meals, before prayers, upon waking in the morning, and after using the toilet.  Note that this was for ritual purity (though there was obviously some benefit we now realize for germ control.)  As we move through the gospel, Jesus will have much to say about ritual purity.  He will also demonstrate his ability to overcome ritual impurity through his contagious holiness.  Two types of impurity are discussed in the Bible: ritual and moral.  We understand moral impurity, which is sin.  Ritual impurity was unavoidable and was not sinful (unless you came into the tabernacle/temple without going through the purity procedures.)  Jesus will show that he is the answer for both ritual impurity and moral impurity.  Here, he replaces the waters of ritual purification with wine.  In his last supper, he reveals that his wine represents his blood. He is foreshadowing a new method for complete purification through his blood.  Revelation 7:14 says, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The author says in 2:11 that “this is the first of his signs.”  This gospel has seven signs that climax in the raising of Lazarus from the dead.3 The purpose of the signs is to reveal his glory, which is in keeping with the prologue to the gospel in chapter 1:14

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

May we seek this day to glorify our God.  There are a lot of empty jars out there.

Six stone jars as used for purification (and two smaller jars), as found in first century house of a priest (from the “Burnt House Museum” Jerusalem).

  1. Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), who was never known to miss a chance to see ‘deeper meanings,’ said the six jars represented the six ages.  (From Augustine’s “Tractates on John (9.6)”)  If I were to go down a rabbit hole on this (and yes, I have been known to do just this), I would say there were six disciples there (though I am not sure who the sixth would be) and that filling the six vessels with Jesus’ new wine would be symbolic of filling the disciples with the new wine of the gospel.  I would contrast that to Jeremiah 13:12-14, where people are visualized as jars being filled with wine and sentenced to destruction.  Jesus is filling the disciples with his gospel of the kingdom that, instead of destruction, leads to blessing.  But I will resist the urge to go down that rabbit hole, so pretend you didn’t just read this (But do read the Jeremiah passage and tell me what you think.)
  2. The other form of ritual washing is ‘tevilah,’ which is total body immersion in a mikvah.
  3. Here are the seven signs in John:  water into wine (John 2:1–11), healing a royal official’s son (John 4:46–54), healing a disabled man (John 5:1–15), feeding 5,000 (John 6:1–14), walking on water (John 6:16–21), healing a man born blind (John 9:1–12), and raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–43).

March 29, 27 A.D.  Behold the Lamb – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #22

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

Week 7 ———- John 1:35-42

It was on the first day of the Hebrew month of Aviv, 14 days before Passover in 27 A.D.  That corresponds to our March 29, 1997 years ago. John the Baptist looked at Jesus who had just come from his time in the wilderness, a time of testing and temptation and said ‘Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”  

I will take you on a journey through the Bible so you will know what John knew.  We are familiar with his words, but do we know why he said them?

We have to go back to the beginning when God created everything.  He made this world and created a special place where he could dwell with us.  It was a garden in Eden.  And it was wonderful.  Adam walked in the garden with God. God loved the man and the woman. And there was no sickness, and there was no death.  But there was a tree.   And God told Adam to be obedient to me about the tree.  That fruit is not for you.  If you eat it, there will be death.

Genesis 2:17  “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.“

But Adam and Eve were tempted to eat of that tree, to disobey God’s rules, and when they did, everything changed.  Sin drove a wedge between man and God.  They had to leave the garden, and death did come.  One day, they would die.  And they did die.  The Bible tells us Adam lived for so many years and then died.  Seth lived for so many years, and he died, and Enosh lived for so many years, and then he died.  Please don’t get all caught up in how many years they lived.  The big thing is that they all died.  That was not what God intended. Death was not supposed to be a part of the world. Death was a final separation from God.  There needed to be an answer for sin and death.

Romans 5:12   “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned“

Death began when Adam and Eve sinned. Death entered the world then and became a part of it. But death did not spread to all because one man sinned, but because we all sin. You will die because you have sinned.  

Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death 

And I said that everything changed, but not everything changed. God still, despite sin, loved his children deeply and longed to be reunited with them. So, after these first three chapters of the Bible, the following 1186 chapters are all about how God pursues mankind and how God manages to destroy the barriers of sin and death so that God and man can dwell together again.

God calls Abraham and tells him to obey me, and I will build a great nation from you.  And that nation will be a nation of priests who will carry my message to the whole world.  But Abraham says My wife and I are very old and have no children.  How can we have descendants?  But God says, “I’ve got that.”

But Abraham is not always obedient; he gives up on God’s promise and has a child with his wife’s maid.  But God says no, I will give you and Sarah a child.  And Isaac is born… the child of promise.  

God says, ‘ If I am to build a nation from Abraham, from this one man, I have to know, and he has to know: ‘Is he faithful now?’  So there is a test. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son on a mountain. Will Abraham believe that God can fulfill his promise even if Isaac dies? Will Abraham believe God can conquer death?

Abraham and Isaac set out.  Abraham is about 100 years old, and Isaac is about 30.  And they came to Mt Moriah.

Genesis 22:6  And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. 

It is a heavy load. This is to be a whole burnt offering and must be completely consumed. It will take a lot of wood. So Isaac struggles up the mountain carrying the wood, and Abraham carries the fire and the knife.

Isaac asks, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7).  Abraham replies, “God will provide for himself the lamb” (Genesis 22:8).

At the top of Mount Moriah, Isaac realizes that he is the sacrifice. 

Genesis 22:9  And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

I had always missed something important here. My Jewish friend taught me that the heading for this story in his Bible is “The Binding of Isaac.”  In Hebrew, it is the Akedah. They emphasize the binding because Isaac, as a young man of 30, could have resisted. He could have overpowered his father. But he submits voluntarily to be tied up with ropes and placed on the altar—a willing sacrifice.

Abraham raises the knife. When it seems all is lost for Isaac, God provides a substitute: a male lamb appears. There is a lamb to take the place of sacrifice for Isaac.

Fast forward to when Abraham’s descendants end up in Egypt, and they become slaves for 400 years.  And they are harshly treated.  And they cry out to God for help.

Exodus 3:7-8   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 know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and bropiad land, a land flowing with milk and honey

So God sent Moses, and there were nine horrible plagues, but the pharaoh would not let God’s people go.  So, there is one more plague.   

Exodus 11:4-5   So Moses said, “Thus says the LORD: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

Someone must pay the price for sin.  The wages of sin is death.  The firstborn must die.

But God will spare the firstborn of the Israelites.  There will be a substitute as there was for Isaac.  There will be a lamb. And Exodus 12:5 says, “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old.” Every family will take a lamb, slaughter it, cook it, and eat it.

Exodus 12:13  But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.

This is not an offering for sin; it is a substitution for death.  A family eats it, and none is left.

So they escape Egypt and come to Mount Sinai, where God gives them instructions for a tabernacle so that he can dwell with them. Again, after the first three chapters of the Bible, God is working to restore the relationship with man that he had in the garden. But they are still sinning, so God gives them a means to atone for their sins.  Because their sins are continual, they need a continual sacrifice of sin. So, God establishes the tamid sacrifice.  (Tamid is Hebrew for ‘continual.’)    Again, it is a one-year-old lamb without blemish or spot, 

The tamid lamb would be placed on the altar at 9:00 in the morning, and it will burn on the altar along with all the other sacrifices until 3:00 pm when it is completely consumed.  And so that there be a lamb there continually, another lamb shall be sacrificed and placed on the altar at 3:00 pm and burn until the next morning, when it will start over.

Ever-present sacrificial lamb before the father. for sin

And so it was, every day.   A lamb was placed at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm.  And the people would gather at 9 and 3 for the sacrifice.  They would say the Shmah prayer and the 18 benedictions.

This happened every day for over a thousand years, so there was an ever-present sacrifice before the Father for sins.

In addition to this twice-a-day tamid offering for sin, once a year, at the time of the Passover celebration, beginning at 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., every family would bring a lamb to the temple, slaughter it, take it home, and roast it. It was to be eaten to remember the Passover when a lamb was slain as a substitute for death.  

Because there had to be a solution to the problems of sin and death

But the prophet Isaiah foresaw a time that God would do something different:

Isaiah 43:18-19 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

And Isaiah tells us that this one would be the new Passover and the new sacrifice:

Isaiah 53:3,5-6       He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.


There is one coming, this new Passover, this new sacrifice. God will provide the lamb.

But after Isaiah predicted this new thing God would do, for the next 600 years, the people of Israel said, as Isaac had said, “Where is the Lamb?” 

The nation hits its lowest point, and Babylon attacks them.  The city and the temple are destroyed, and they are taken into captivity for 70 years.  And the people ask, “Where is the lamb that will bring us redemption?”

They finally return and rebuild the temple, but it is only a shadow of its former self. They make an offering, but God does not show up. And the people ask, “Where is the lamb who will do this new thing?”

They are conquered by the nations who burn their bible scrolls, desecrate their temple, and refuse to let them say the name of their God. And the people ask, “Where is the lamb that will restore us?”

Then they are conquered by the Romans, who are brutal, bring more persecution, bring more death, and crucify whole villages of their neighbors. And the people ask, “Where is the lamb?  Where is the way in the wilderness?”

  They rebuild the temple, and it is beautiful on the outside, but inside, it is corrupt and controlled by priests who swindle money from the poor to gain personal power and wealth. And the people ask, “Where is the lamb?”

And Jesus walked out of the wilderness, back to where John the Baptist was preaching near the Jordan River.  John looked at Jesus, who had just come from his time in the wilderness, a time of testing and temptation, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.‘   God has provided the lamb.

Jesus spends the next year teaching and demonstrating how to live as a member of the Kingdom of God. When his year is up, he heads to Jerusalem to fulfill his role as the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It is the time of the Passover celebration when everyone comes to Jerusalem to sacrifice a spotless lamb to celebrate God’s delivery from death. And he gives himself up.  And as Isaiah foresaw, He is beaten repeatedly, scourged, abused, and he did not say a word.

Is. 53:7    He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.

After his beating, Pilate presented Jesus and said, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5). Pilate did not know what John the Baptist knew.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.  
And Yehovah took the wood of the cross and laid it on Jesus his Son.

And Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice up the hill.
And Jesus carried the wood for the cross up the hill.

And Isaac was bound by ropes and laid on the wood.
And Jesus was bound by nails, laid on the wood.

And the innocent lamb took Isaac’s place.
And the innocent lamb took our place.

We stood guilty before God of sins, knowing that the wages of our sins were death.  We deserved the penalty of death.  But Jesus is the innocent, spotless lamb who takes our place, 

It was our sin he took on; it was our punishment of death. He deserved none of it.  But he did it because he loves us.  He would do anything for us.  He would do anything to be able to reunite us – to restore the fellowship of man with God in the garden as he first designed it.

And in the very spot on the same mountain where Abraham laid Isaac on the altar, God provided the lamb. On that very same spot, at 9 a.m., the people gather and pray, and as they have done every year for over 1000 years, the yearling lamb without blemish is being placed on the altar, where it will be until 3 p.m.

But this day is different because it is the day of Passover, and after the 9 am lamb is placed, they begin the slaughter of the Passover lambs. Each family brings a 1-year-old lamb to the temple to that spot on the mountain where God provided the lamb and the sacrifice of the Passover lambs begins.  But this day is very different Because at that same time, 9 am when the Tamid is offered for sin, when the Passover lambs are being slain to remember the salvation from death,  Jesus is placed on the cross, where he stays until 3 pm. 

And John the Baptist points from the grave and shouts, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

At 3 pm, the Tamid lamb for sin has been consumed, and the last Passover lamb has been slain, 

And Jesus says, “It is finished.” In Hebrew, that is one word, “Asah.” That is the last word of Psalm 22, the Psalm that tells the story of the crucifixion.  “Asah” means “I have done it.”

At the exact moment when Jesus’ work is complete on the cross, He says, “It is finished,” and the veil of the temple is torn.  The curtain that separates God’s presence from the people is ripped from top to bottom. There is no longer a dividing wall between us and God’s presence. The barrier was sin. Jesus conquered sin on the cross.  Now, there is a way for God to be reunited with man.  And for the first time since God commanded the continual sacrifice in Leviticus — for the first time in over a thousand years, there is no need for the twice-a-day tamid sacrifice of the lambs because Jesus’ sacrifice is the perfect sacrifice. 

Sin has been defeated once and for all.

Sin is defeated, but what about death?   Death, that final separation, must be addressed.

And Jesus, who did not deserve to die, is placed in the Grave.  But the prophets had also predicted the defeat of death.

Isaiah 25:8  He will swallow up death forever; and Yehovah God 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.

Hosea 13:14   I shall ransom them from the power of the grave; I shall redeem them from Death.  Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, grave, where is your sting? 

Three days later, the stone rolled away from where he was buried to reveal an empty tomb. The angel tells Mary, “He is not here, for he has risen.” The news spreads.

And I can almost see old Nicodemus when someone tells him that Jesus’ grave is empty

and he finally understands what Jesus was trying to say to him.

Nicodemus, For God, so loved the world… This is how much God loved the world. This is how much God wanted to restore the relationship with mankind that was tarnished by separation by sin and death. This is what God was willing to do.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

So when we hear John the Baptist’s words, ”Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,” we remember that Jesus is the Lamb of God who conquered both sin and death.

1 Peter 1:18-19  But you were ransomed with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

1 Corinthians 5:7   For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

This explains our communion, our Lord’s Supper.  Why do we remember what Jesus did by eating bread that represents his body and juice that represents his blood?  Because the Passover lamb was eaten, and his blood is our ransom from sin.  Because sin and death are both defeated 

1 Cor. 15:57   But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

March 30, 27 A.D.  Jesus with Andrew, John, and Simon – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #23

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog ,

Week 7 ———  What are you looking for?
John 1:35-42

(You may notice we skipped #22, which covers John 1:35. It will be released tomorrow, as it coincides with our Resurrection Day message.)

John 1:35-42   The next day, again, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “Where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.  One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

Sometimes, we don’t know what we are looking for. When you reach a… certain age… you may find yourself walking in a room because you know you are looking for something—but you temporarily forget what you are looking for. (It is even more embarrassing when the keys you forgot you were looking for are in your hand or those glasses you forgot you were looking for are on top of your head.)

Jesus asked the disciples, “What are you looking for?”  Was he asking for him or for them?  Was he asking so he would know, or was he asking them to consider for themselves so they would really know what they were looking for?  I think he wanted them to consider what they were seeking.  It is an important question.  What are you looking for from Jesus?

I don’t think Andrew and John really knew what they were looking for.  John the Baptist had just pointed Jesus out as “The Lamb that takes away the sins of the world.”  Perhaps they wanted Jesus to explain how he would be that Lamb.  Perhaps they wanted him to ask them to be his disciples.  Maybe they didn’t know exactly what they wanted, but they knew the answers to all the essential questions were in this ‘lamb of God.’  

Their reply, “Where are you staying?” is an answer to Jesus question.  They want more time with Jesus.  They want a relationship with Him.  Just this week, one of my friends had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with someone whom I can only describe as his pastor-hero. This world-famous pastor, author of around 50 books, leads one of the largest churches in the US.  My friend was asked to submit a few questions to ask this celebrity pastor.  In talking with him about it, it was clear that my friend didn’t want answers to questions as much as he just wanted to make a new friend.  He wasn’t seeking answers so much as seeking a relationship.  

John says it was the tenth hour. It is important to know that John counts time differently than the other gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the synoptic gospels) count time using the Jewish method of dividing the daylight hours into 12 hours from sunrise to sunset (6 am to 6 pm). So, in this method, the tenth hour of the day would be 4 pm.  However, John uses the Roman method, which counts the hours from midnight (or from noon).  So the tenth hour in John would be 10 am, which makes the phrase “stayed with him that day” a more reasonable description.

Jesus invites them to come with him and see where he is staying.  Andrew takes a detour to locate his brother, Simon, telling him, “We have found the anointed one (Hebrew ‘Messiah’ / Greek ‘Christos’ / English ‘Christ’).  Peter joins the two and meets Jesus who tells Peter he will in the future be called ‘Cephas’.  ‘Cephas’ is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for ‘rock.’  Peter is the English version of the Greek ‘petros’ (meaning rock).  The Hebrew word for ‘rock’ is ‘evan’.  We are not told why Simon will be called ‘Peter,’ Evan,’ or ‘Rocky’ in the future.  (We will talk about this one day in the future.)  

This brings up the question of what language Jesus spoke.  It is almost undisputed that Jesus spoke Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, but what was his primary language?  It matters because knowing a speaker/author’s primary language influences understanding of their work.  For years, theologians (including the Pope) have maintained that Jesus spoke Aramaic.  The Jews adopted that language during their captivity in Babylon.  Parts of the book of Ezra and much of Daniel are written in Aramaic.  On returning from exile, Nehemiah complained that the Jews did not speak their original language. (Neh. 13:23)  So Ezra established Hebrew Torah readings, prayers, and songs, many of which are still used today.  

Recent evidence makes it more likely Jews in Jesus’ day spoke Hebrew more than Aramaic.  The Dead Sea Scrolls material, written between 200 BC and 100 AD, is almost exclusively Hebrew, both scripture and commentary.  Of the 215 different types of Jewish coins that have been discovered (dating from 200 BC to 200 AD), all but one had a Hebrew inscription.   Personal letters from that period have been discovered in Hebrew.  And the Book of Matthew was undoubtedly initially written in Hebrew.  It is clearly from a Hebrew mindset, with many Hebrew idioms and expressions, and there are many word connections and puns that do not work in other languages.  Finally, there is John 19:19-20.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. (John 19:19-20)

The word translated “Aramaic” by the ESV is the Greek “Hebraisti.”  Scholars have long asserted that this word can mean either Hebrew or Aramaic and because they once believed that Hebrew was a dead language, it had to mean ‘Aramaic.’  Scholars are not quick to give up their traditional beliefs, but with more and more information proving that Hebrew wasn’t a dead language in the first century, this view is changing.

Jesus asks this question many times in the gospels. He asks the blind man what he wants.  

What are you looking for from Jesus?  Some people have questions and want answers.

Some want a ‘get-out-of-hell-free card’. Some want Jesus to take all of their problems away. First, I think we should seek a relationship.  That is what God wants.  He designed creation so that we would have a place to fellowship with him, and He is moving events so that we will have that Eden experience again with Him.  Secondly, I want from Jesus what he wants for me.  I dare not trust my own desires.  I trust that this God, Yehovah, who loves me, will only give me good gifts.  He knows my needs better than I do.  

So these two teenagers, Andrew and John, joined by the oldest of the future disciples, Peter, spend the day with Jesus. And it changed them forever. Note that they are not called to be disciples of Jesus at this point. That will happen months later. But it certainly explains how when Jesus sees Simon and Andrew again, fishing in the Sea of Galilee, they are willing to drop their nets and immediately follow this teacher they knew from before. 

Today, let’s you and I spend a day with Jesus.  If we do, we will never be the same.

(Bono said his hit “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” was really a gospel song, but more about doubt than faith. If you haven’t heard the version he does with a gospel choir from Harlem, you need to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Wt3dhF4fU )

March 28, 27 A.D.  Jesus in the Wilderness – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #21

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog ,

Week 6 ———  The Temptations

Matthew 4:3-11— Mark 1:13b  —  Luke 4:3-13

Jesus has endured 40 days in the wilderness, and now the adversary comes to him with three temptations.  

Matthew 4:2-4   And after fasting for days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

The accuser comes to Jesus in his time of greatest weakness.  He has fasted for 40 days.  But God has not yet proclaimed an end to Jesus’ fast.  Notice the accuser begins, “IF you are the Son of God.”  Jesus had just heard the voice of God himself proclaim him as the Son 40 days ago 

Matthew 3:16-17 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; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

First, the accuser will question your identity.  “If you are really saved, you would not have had that bad thought or done that bad thing.”  “If you were really a child of God, then your life wouldn’t be so hard or in such a mess.”  If he tried to place doubt in Jesus’ mind about his identity, rest assured you will face the same temptation at some point.  

Then the enemy will try to get you to question God’s goodness.  This strategy has been the accuser’s method from the beginning.  In the garden, “He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”  By exaggerating God’s prohibition from one tree to all, he places doubt in her mind and questions God’s goodness.  She questioned whether God was holding back something good for her.  This was Israel in the wilderness.  They were led into a place with no food, a forced fast.  Soon, they were doubting God’s goodness, asking why God brought them out of Egypt, where there was plenty of food, to a place where they would starve. This was also Jesus’ temptation.  You can almost hear the accuser saying, “Come on, 40 days of fasting is sure to be enough. You can end this fast now.  Aren’t you hungry?”  The temptation facing Adam and Eve, Israel, and Jesus is this: ‘surely your appetites are a better indication of what you need than God’s word.’  And that is the temptation we constantly face.  Will we seek to satisfy our appetites, our lusts for food, money, possessions, pleasure, power, etc?  Or will we strive to be obedient to our Father and seek first the Kingdom of God?

This was a real temptation for Jesus.  He was hungry, and he had the ability to make bread appear (even without stones) as he did in the miracle of feeding the 5000 or the 4000.  But he answers:

“It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses explains to Israel why obedience in fasting is essential:

“And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

Our appetites should not be what controls our behavior.  Our behavior should be modeled after God’s word.  

Matt. 4:5-6   “Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

One of the secrets to understanding this temptation is a knowledge of the geography of the wilderness Jesus was in.  The Judean Wilderness is full of cliffs and wadis.  Yet somehow (whether in Spirit or physically), the accuser transports Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple.  Why was this area, with many steep cliffs, not a suitable setting for the temptation?   The difference is that in the temple in the city of Jerusalem, many people would see it.  Remember that Jesus keeps his miracles mostly in isolation in the beginning.  He tells people he heals not to tell anyone.  Other than the required feasts, he stays away from Jerusalem.  Then, in the final weeks of his ministry, Jesus purposely arranges to do an undeniable miracle in front of a crowd at Jerusalem’s doorstep.  Jesus delayed answering Mary and Martha’s plea to come and heal Lazarus, delaying his arrival until Lazarus was dead for four days.  (The thought in that day was that the spirit remained with the body for three days.  Waiting an extra day makes the miracle even more undeniable.)  Jesus forces this into the public where the religious authorities can not ignore it because “his hour has come.”  And it is this miracle that forces the Sanhedrin to decide that Jesus must die.  Had Jesus demonstrated such a public miracle before his ministry even started, he would have lost his opportunity to have that year with his disciples to teach and demonstrate the Kingdom of God to them.  That explains the ‘where’ of the temptation.

For the temptation itself, the accuser quotes Psalm 91, a Psalm about the Messiah. It promises protection, rescue, and deliverance.  But we have already discussed that putting God to the test is sinful.  Jesus’ answer from Deuteronomy references Israel testing God when they were thirsty.  Again, they doubted God’s goodness, saying he brought them there to kill them with thirst.  We easily see how jumping off a high place is a test. How is Israel testing God?

if you are thirsty and there is no water, you have two choices.  You can say:

  1. “It is okay, God is over all.  He love me and will provide for me as he always has. We got hungry and he dropped bread out of the sky for us.  He will find us water”

or 

2.     Why did you bring us here to die, Moses?  We had plenty of water in Egypt. (Here they sound like my kids when they were little on a long car trip, “I’m thirsty, I’m starving to death, I’m hot, when are we going to get there?”

Again they doubted God’s goodness, saying he brought them there to kill them with thirst.  The Bible calls that murmuring. Just before this, Israel had witnessed the beginning of the recurring miracle of bread from heaven.  And yet they doubt. 

 How many signs do you need to remember that God is good?  Apparently, ten miraculous plagues, the parting of a sea, the destruction of the Egyptian army, and raining food from the sky were not enough.  How many signs do we need that God is good?  Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, we tend to groan and complain about any hardship we face.  Bad weather, the high price of gasoline, the waits at the doctor’s office, an interruption in internet or cell phone or TV service — how quickly we forget our blessings and God’s faithfulness and murmur over trivial first-world problems.  How quick we are to test God.  

This was a real temptation for Jesus.  He was the Son of God but had lived his life in obscurity.  How easy it would have been to show people all at once who he was and the power and wealth he possessed.  But that was not God’s plan.  He was to live a simple life.  For though the cattle on a thousand hills were his, he lived a life of the poor.  Though he is the power and the glory, he lived and died as the powerless and the humiliated.  At his arrest in the garden, when his disciple attacks with a sword, Jesus rebukes him, saying:

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”  Matthew 26:53-54.

It is the same temptation again: doubting God’s goodness and provision, being disobedient, abandoning God’s plan. 

The third temptation:

Matthew 4:8-10   Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

This may be the hardest one for us to identify with.  “I would never be a Satan worshiper!” we would proclaim.  It seems this temptation is no real temptation at all.  Or is it?

First, let’s deal with the satan’s promise of power and glory, all the kingdoms of the world.  Was it his to give?  Russel Moore, in his book Tempted and Tried, says this:

“Again, the Devil’s words were partly true. Because the original human rulers capitulated their dominion to the snake, Satan is now “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4: 4) and “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2: 2). The kingdoms of the world are under his sway right now because, in sin, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5: 19). But this reign of death is illegitimate and parasitic. The cosmos itself is bucking in revolt against this dark power, groaning for the true heirs, “the sons of God” to be revealed in resurrection (Rom. 8: 19–21). Satan’s power is twofold. He incites human sin by governing people through “the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2: 3). And he stands as accuser over humanity, keeping us in captivity through fear of death and the coming judgment (Heb. 2: 14–15; Rev. 12: 10).” 1

Indeed, these kingdoms are all the accusers (temporarily) to give.  But they would all be handed over to Jesus one day (Rev. 11:15 “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”).  Jesus was the Christ- the anointed one- anointed to be King.  Moore points out:

“Satan was not just trying to tempt Jesus; he was attempting to adopt Jesus. Satan, in all three temptations, is assuming the role of a father—first in provision, then in protection, and now in the granting of an inheritance. Satan didn’t just want to be Jesus’ lord; he wanted to be his father.”2

Jesus responds again with a verse from Deuteronomy.  He prefaces it with a command for the accuser to leave him.  He will use these exact words near the end of his ministry, speaking to Peter after Peter said Jesus should not suffer and die (Matthew 16:23).  (Peter’s statement is similar to this third temptation.)  The issue is worship.  

We think of worship as singing songs or praying, but worship is ascribing worth or value.  Billy Graham said, “Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.”  We could say the same about your calendar or day planner.  What you value is where you spend your money and time.  There is a lot more worshipping of the kingdoms of this world than we would all like to admit.  We could all use a little more practice repeating Jesus’ phrase, “Be gone, accuser, You should worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

You may never have a one-on-one confrontation with the satan, but you will undoubtedly face many temptations. Remember, your desires are waiting to lure and entice you.  Sin is crouching at your door.  Like Jesus, you will likely face the hardest temptations when you are at your weakest.  But Jesus, who was “tempted in all ways like as we are,” is interceding for you.  He is praying for you. Be ready for the battle.  Put on your spiritual armor.  The victory is the Lord’s.

  1. Tempted and Tried. By Russell Moore. p139.
  2. Ibid. p 136.

Just a heads up! The gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry get busy for the next five days. So look for a blog entry each day today through Tuesday. I have some tough news for those of you following Jesus with your feet. In a few days, Jesus will make the trek from the Jordan River where John was to Cana of Galilee.  It will help if you have ever run or walked a marathon.  It will be even more helpful if you have done two on consecutive days.  I’ll post an optional entry in the “Step by Step with Jesus” section of the page this weekend with information on the difficulty of determining the site of John’s ministry and Jesus’ journey to Galilee, and what he saw along the way.

February 16 – March 27, 27 A.D.  Jesus in the Wilderness – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #20

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

Week 6 ———  The Devil You Say (an incredibly brief introduction)

Matthew 4:3-11— Mark 1:13b  —  Luke 4:3-13

Jesus is on day 39 of 40 days of being tempted in the wilderness.  Then, we will come to the three detailed temptations we find in Matthew and Luke.  So, it is time to introduce the next character, the devil.

First, let me remind you of another Hebrew word you already know.  (You know many:  Amen, Hallelujah, Hosanna, Messiah, Gehenna, Rabbi, manna, etc.)  This word is ‘satan’ and is defined as “accuser, or slanderer.”  It is used in Psalm 71:13 “May my satans be put to shame.”  Here, your English version translates the Hebrew word to English, and it reads:  “May my accusers be put to shame.”  This word is not a name.  In Hebrew, whenever it is used to refer to an individual, it is preceded by a definite article “the,” so it is always “the satan.”  It is a title, not a name.  

The Greek word for “accuser or slanderer” is ‘diabolos.’  It was the Greek word used to translate the Hebrew word “the satan” when the Older Testament was translated into Greek.  Sometimes, the Greek and English versions use the Hebrew word ‘satan’ instead of translating it to ‘diabolos’ or ‘the devil,’ and when they do, our English translations leave out the definite article “the.”  The word ‘satan’ is also capitalized in the King James English translation because all titles were capitalized in the 1600s.1  So without a preceding ‘the’ and with the capitalization, ‘satan’ came to be thought of as a proper name.

In Mark 8:33, Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”   Now, I hope you don’t think Jesus was saying that Peter was actually the enemy, the devil.  Peter was acting as an accuser, saying that God’s plan was not a good one.  But 43 out of 45 translations I checked use the Hebrew word ‘satan’ (usually capitalized) rather than translate it to ‘accuser.’2

But what about “Lucifer”?  Isn’t that the name of the evil one?  No, not at all.  “Lucifer” is from a very unfortunate translation of the Bible done in 405 A.D. by Jerome, the Latin Vulgate.  He mistranslated Isaiah 14:12, which actually refers to the city of Babylon and the ‘morning star’ (the planet Venus).  If you want to read how this happened and how this is also responsible for our understanding of the devil having horns, pointy ears, and goat legs, I included the source in the note below.3

Why is all of this important? This is ‘according to David,’ so feel free to disagree. (If you do, please let me know—as the rabbi said, “How can we learn if we never disagree?”) Names are important. Remembering someone’s name gives them honor.

You know that Egypt has many massive temples and monuments. You may not appreciate that they are covered with unique hieroglyphs carved in stone—whole stories of a pharaoh’s life.  If you are the pharaoh and commissioning a temple, you put your name all over it —stories of how wonderful you are, stories of your victories in battle, stories of how you saved Egypt.  In some places you can see where someone has scratched off the pharaoh’s name from the stone inscription.

The pharaoh Akhenaten tried to change Egyptian religion to worship only one god (the sun god).  After his death, Egypt reverted to polytheism, and there was an effort to erase that whole era from Egypt’s history.  Most of the cartouches with his name have been chiseled out. By removing his name, they dishonor him.  To remember and proclaim someone’s name brings them honor.  We still do this today.  We name buildings, bridges, and roads after people to honor them.  Those who are killed are remembered by name.  The satan, the accuser, does not deserve any honor.  He has no name.

There is a name above all names; there is one who deserves all the honor.

Philippians.2:9-10   “Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Whether you say it as the Hebrew ‘Yeshua,’ as Jesus’ mother did, or ‘Iesous’ (Greek), or ‘Isa’ (Arabic), or ‘Yesu’ (Swahili), it all brings glory where it is due.

So why don’t we say the Father’s name?  He gave his name to Moses in Exodus 3:15, at the burning bush:

Exodus 3:15   God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

“This is my name.” What is the name, “the LORD?” That’s not a name; that is a title. When I read that verse in my Hebrew Bible, there is no ‘the’ there, and the word is not ‘lord,’ but God’s name.  Our English translations of the Bible substitute ‘the LORD’ (in all capital letters) whenever the Hebrew text has God’s actual name listed, which is 6824 times.  Almost all commentaries will say we don’t know the exact vowels in God’s name because they were omitted from the Hebrew text.  Indeed, the middle vowel is not listed in the standard Masoretic Hebrew text, which makes the word unpronounceable.  (Hebrew words require a vowel between middle consonants. Interestingly, the traditionally accepted pronouncement of the name is “Yahweh,” but that is also not a valid Hebrew word for the same reason.)  The reason given for the missing vowel is that rabbis said that God’s name is too holy to pronounce.  Before the time of persecution by the Greeks, however, in which public reading of the Torah was outlawed, as well as saying God’s name aloud, God’s name was used frequently and in everyday language, such as in greetings. Recent research has found over 7000 instances where scribes accidentally left in place the ‘missing’ middle vowel in copies of Hebrew texts, with the pronunciation being ‘Yehovah.’ (As expected, no instances of the vowels of ‘Yahweh’ have been found.)4

Plenty of passages in the Older Testament invite people to praise the name of God and talk about how blessed his name is.  Certainly, this is inconsistent with keeping his name a secret.  How sad that when Yehovah gave Moses his name, he said that this is how he will be remembered, but we have essentially erased his name from our Bibles.  (I will translate God’s name as “Yehovah” instead of using “the LORD.”)

Psalm 34:3 “Oh, magnify Yehovah with me, and let us exalt his name together!”

Nehemiah 9:5    “Stand up and bless Yehovah your God from everlasting to everlasting.  Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

So why does the satan have no name?   

Job 18:5,17 “Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out…His memory perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the street.”

The wicked will not be remembered or honored.  Their memory will perish.

We first encounter this accuser in the Garden of Eden, where he is in rebellion against God and tempts Adam and Eve to join him in rebellion. He is described there as a serpent or snake. He and the demons are seen as former members of God’s throne room, part of the heavenly council.  (In Isaiah chapter 6, the prophet sees the throne room and describes the council there as ‘seraphim,’ which is Hebrew for ‘snakes.’)  These demons and the devil are the forces at work in this world, corrupting on a grand and personal scale.  They are at work seeking to destroy God’s good creation and forcing it back into chaos.   

I really don’t want to get into the question of “Why is there evil in the world?”  There are thousands of books on this subject with numerous explanations.  Let me say this:

When God created the world, it was all good. There was nothing bad. But then there was rebellion by members of God’s heavenly council and by man. And then, not everything was good. There was evil. I prefer to think of good and evil as relational concepts. God created a world with opposites: up and down, light and dark, hot and cold, and good and evil. 

‘Up’ and ‘down’ are not things but are relational.  People living on the other side of the earth define ‘up’ as being in the opposite direction as we do.  How do you measure darkness?  You can measure light with a light meter.  There are no darkness meters.   Darkness is not so much a thing as it is the absence of light.  Darkness can only be measured in the presence or lack of light.  A hole exists only as the absence of dirt in the ground. But it can not be separated from the idea of dirt.  It is a relational concept.  Evil is not a thing that can be defined except in relation to good.  Evil is the absence of good.  Since evil is a relational concept, it is anti-God, a movement away from or counter to God.

We are not cosmological dualists;5 we don’t believe there are two gods, one good and one evil.6   The fallen former members of God’s heavenly council are entirely subordinate to God.  The satan has to ask God’s permission to test Job (and Peter, see Luke 22:31.)  The demons have no choice but to obey Jesus.  The accuser is called the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31), but only because God has granted him that position for a brief time.  God is ultimately in charge: “The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” (Daniel 4:17).  The accuser’s reign is limited by God in its range, power, and time. 

Do not dismiss, however, the concept of spiritual battle in this world.  It is just as real as everything you can see with your eyes. The satan and the demons are in constant work to drag everyone and everything away from God and into chaos.  We are told to be watchful and alert because:

“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”  1 Peter 5:8

We are warned to put on spiritual armor to protect us in this battle:

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”  Ephesians 6:11-13

So be aware of the battle, be prepared for the battle, but be assured that the final battle has already been won.

Jesus saw his mission as an attack on the forces of evil in this world.  1 John 3:8 says, “…The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”  This is as prophesied: 

Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

And Jesus defeated the satan and the forces of evil on the cross.

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” 2 Col. 2:13-15.

So when the accuser, the satan, comes to God’s court as the prosecuting attorney against you, he opens his briefcase to pull out a list of all the charges against you, and it is empty.  All sins have been forgiven; all debts have been paid.  He has no evidence to present against you.  He is ‘disarmed,’  Col. 2:15

But for Jesus in 27 A.D., after 40 days in the wilderness, the battle is ahead of him.  The Accuser comes at him with multiple ways to get Jesus to step off the path God has for him.  We will discuss the three temptations next time.

1.  “By the 17th century, the practice had extended to titles (Sir, Lady), forms of address (Father, Mistris), and personified nouns (Nature). Emphasized words and phrases would also attract a capital.”  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (David Crystal), p67.

2. Young’s Literal Translation and  the Weymouth Translation translate as ‘adversary.’  Note that by modern English rules, a title would be capitalized here because it is in the form of a direct address.  (My English teacher said that both of the following are correct:  “The pastor came to visit.” and “Thanks for calling, Pastor.”  The second occurrence is capitalized because it is a direct address.)

3.   “The Lucifer Myth”  by Roy Blizzard.  https://www.biblescholars.org/2013/05/the-lucifer-myth.html

4.  If you want to understand more about the pronunciation of God’s name and why it is not spoken aloud by most Jews today, this book by Dr. Nehemia Gordon, a Hebrew scholar, and a Karaite Jew, is essential.  Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. 2012.

5.  Cosmological Dualism is the belief that good and evil are two equal and opposing forces that balance the universe.  

6.  The ancient Persians worshipped many gods until Zoroaster had a vision (sometime between 900-1200 B.C.) that there were two gods, a good god and an evil god (a dualism).  Isaiah 45 is a prophecy that there will be a ruler named Cyrus. Cyrus was the ruler of Persia who conquered Babylon 140 years later.  In this prophecy, God has a message for Cyrus of Persia to tell him there is only one god.

February 16 – March 27, 27 A.D.  Jesus in the Wilderness – The Year of the Lord’s Favor #19

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 5 ———  Temptation

Matthew 4:1,2  —  Luke 4:1-2

Jesus is still in the wilderness.  If it seems like he has been there a long time, he has.   We are on Day 32/40 in the wilderness, and if it seems like a long time to you, remember Jesus hasn’t eaten since Feb 16.  But he is there for a purpose.  He is preparing for his year-long ministry that will end in crucifixion and resurrection.  As we near the end of our 40 days in the wilderness and approach the three recorded temptations of Jesus by the devil, it’s time to discuss the idea of temptation further. 

We have already covered how both ‘tempt’ and ‘test’ come from the same Hebrew and Greek words and how you have to understand the context to use the proper word. We also discussed how the meaning of our English words has changed over time. We will use the modern idea that a temptation is a test in which the giver of the test wants you to fail and actively encourages you to fail.

“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”  James 1:13

We also briefly discussed how God can’t be tempted — God is never wrong, so how could he be enticed to do wrong?  We also discussed how God tempts no one.  Do not doubt the goodness of God as the Israelites did.  God is always good, and because he loves us, he is always for our good.  It would be outside his character to want or entice us to fail.  So, if temptation does not come from God, where does it come from?”

“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.  James 1:14

‘Lured’ and ‘enticed’ are both about baiting a trap or hunting.  And who is the hunter?  Who is the tempter?  Not the devil, not other people, but your own desire.  We cannot escape our desires; they are always with us.  And they are not the same for everyone. We are all lured by different things.  The same things that tempt one person may not tempt another.  Some desires we know are in our DNA.  The genes that predispose people to alcoholism have been identified.  Also, for some forms of gluttony.  But genetic predisposition is not an excuse to sin. You can’t say, “Well, that is just how I was made,” because desire is not sin.  Being tempted is not sinful.  Choosing to follow those desires is sinful.  So, the blame is primarily on our own desire. Now, other people or the devil may encourage us, but following our desires is our downfall.

“Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”   James 1:15

If you do not keep your desires in check, if you nurture them and allow them to grow, you may follow them off the path of obedience.  Giving in to our desires is sinful.  God told Cain that “sin is crouching at the door” (who is hunting now?), and all we have to do is open the door of our desire, and sin is waiting to pounce on us. Notice how desire is pictured as a living thing being born, growing, and leading to death.  They start small – a social drink, an innocent flirtation, an eye looking in the wrong direction – then it is a slow fade down the path to destruction.  

Did Jesus have desire?  He was fully human, and we are told he was tempted “like as we are.” So, he had to have desires.  And he was tempted, “but without sin”.  He never let his desires run loose.  He learned to fill himself with a different kind of desire.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”  Gal. 5:16

Notice that those ‘desires of the flesh’ are still there in a person who is walking ‘by the Spirit.’  They are just not gratified.  We need to choose to continue to follow a new set of desires. The more we seek to gratify the desires of the Spirit, the further we will get from following our fleshly desires.  

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  Ps 37:4

This is an often misunderstood verse.  No one has ever misunderstood it more than Oprah Winfrey.  Ms. Winfrey shared in 2004 that this was her favorite verse, and I will quote her: “’LORD’ has a wide range: compassion, love, forgiveness, kindness. So you delight yourself in those virtues where the character of the Lord is revealed.” She said, “If you focus on being a force for good, then good will come.”  (A very ‘karma-like’ statement.)  She ignores that ‘LORD’ is God’s actual name (Yehovah) and applies it in her very universalist ‘all gods are god’ manner.   The usual misunderstanding of this verse is not much better, thinking the verse is saying that ‘if we enjoy God, he will give us whatever we desire.’  But the word used for ‘desires’ here is the Hebrew “mishala” which comes from the root ‘shaal’ which means ‘to ask’ and is frequently used in the OT in asking God for guidance.1  First, we must ‘delight in Yehovah’ or, as the JPS puts it, “Seek the favor [delight] of the lord.” How do we seek the delight of Yehovah? How does a nine-year-old seek the favor of her mother?  By being obedient, cleaning her room, being nice to her brother, and talking respectfully.  If we are obedient, he will give us that “desires transplant” we desperately need.

This brings me to the worst advice I have ever heard anyone give. It was a young pastor counseling a member facing a difficult decision.   The pastor said,  “Just follow your heart.”  Why is that bad advice?  

In the culture of the Bible, the heart is seen as the place of our emotions, decisions, thinking, desires, and choices.  (Modern medicine tells us all these things happen in the brain, but our culture still refers to the actions of the heart in a similar fashion to ancient civilizations.)

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick”  Jer. 17:9.

“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.”  Matthew 15:19.

Our hearts cannot be trusted.  Our hearts are so damaged that surgical repair is insufficient. We require a heart transplant.  Fortunately, God has that covered, and Ezekiel foresaw that long ago.

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”   Ezekiel 36:26-27

So God will give us a new spirit and heart with new desires.  But we still exist in a fallen world.  We can still choose to follow the wrong desires and the wrong path.  One day, our redemption will be complete, this fallen world will be no more, and this struggle will end.

So please don’t advise anyone to“follow their heart.”  Perhaps we should still be wearing tassels like Jesus did.  We still need that reminder.

If you watch “The Chosen,” you can’t miss the tassels hanging on the corners of Jesus’ and the disciple’s (and any other Jews’) clothing.  One episode (Season 3, Episode 5) features the story in the scripture where a woman is healed by touching the tassels on Jesus’ garment (the story is in Mark 5:21-34.)  Why do Jesus and his disciples (and other devout Jewish people in “The Chosen” wear tassels?  They are commanded in the Torah for this reason:

“And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.”  Numbers 15:39

These tassels brush against your leg every step you take.  Should you decide to wander off the path of righteousness, they remind you to be obedient to God, to fix your eye on Him, and not to be led astray by the desires of your heart.  Now, let’s look at another essential passage about temptation:

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,…”  1 Corinthians 10:13.

If you stop the verse here, you get the good news that God will not tempt us beyond our ability.  From this, many incorrectly state, “God will not put on us more than we can bear.”  But the scripture makes it clear that God will purposely put more on us than we can bear. 

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”   2 Cor. 1:8-10 

  Why does God put us in situations that are “far beyond our ability to endure”?

If He only allowed what we could bear on our own, then we would have no need for God to help us.  “Never mind, God, I don’t need your help. I got this,” we might stupidly say.  No, he puts more on us than we can bear so that we will learn to put our trust and faith in him.  Life is much more than we can handle at times.  We need to learn to seek his help.   So the verse doesn’t end there.  

Let’s read a little more of that verse:

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape,…”

If the verse stops there, we get the idea that God will rescue us no matter how hard things are. He will allow us to escape the awful trial or temptation. He will open a door for a way out of the dark valley.

But the verse doesn’t end there…..

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it.”  1 Corinthians 10:13

God’s escape plan is not the removal of the temptation but reinforcement to resist the temptation.  When walking through the valley of the shadow of death, God does not send a helicopter to airlift you out of your trouble.  Instead, he joins you in the valley and walks with you so you can endure it. (See Psalm 23)  Why?  Because if we don’t endure it, we will not get the full benefit of the trial.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”  James 1:2.

You are going to need God’s help when you are tempted.  If you try to fight temptations yourself, you will get into trouble.  Jesus is there interceding for us so that we may not fall prey to temptation (Hebrews 2:18).  Like his example, we can refute temptation by our knowledge of scripture.  Why do we memorize scripture?  Psalm 119:11 says we hide the Word in our hearts so we may not sin against God.  And we can be accountable for others.  We need friends who are willing to challenge us when we wander.  (As Leonard Smart said, “Everyone needs a Nathan.”2)  And finally, the best way to avoid temptation is to flee when you see it.  

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (2 Tim. 2:22)

We must run away from temptation as Joseph did from Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:7-12).   But Paul tells us to run away from sin and toward righteousness, faith, love, and peace.  We need to fill our lives with the things of God so that we will not feel the need to fill our lives with other things.

Remember to seek joy in all your tests and temptations today. The Bible says to “flee idolatry,” “resist evil,” and “endure tests.”  Get your verbs in the right place:  Don’t flee tests, don’t endure idolatry, etc.

Please see my Bibliography for recommended books and links to obtain them.

1.  Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. p. 891. (1999).

2. 11: Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without. Sweet, Leonard. (2012)