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December 10, 2025 –  Shalom, and the War You Didn’t Realize You Were Fighting— Acts #24

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , , ,

December 10, 2025 –  Shalom, and the War You Didn’t Realize You Were Fighting— Acts #24
Acts 9:1-9

Words in Hebrew have very rich meanings. Last time, we discussed the Hebrew word ‘shema’.  Shema means listen, but more than listen, it means listen and obey.  Obedience is not optional.  If you did not obey, then you did not hear.  Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” You will find a version of this 15 times in the New Testament. That isn’t just a poetic phrase Jesus threw out there.  He isn’t speaking English.  It is about shema.  Jesus is talking about obedience.   “If you hear what I am saying, then be obedient.”

Today, we look at the word Shalom.  It begins with the same letter, ש (shin).  It means peace.  And peace is the candle that many of you lit this past week for Advent.  But like the Hebrew word shema, this word has a richer meaning.  Shalom means more than our concept of peace.  It carries the idea of wholeness, that all is well, that all is well with you, and with your relationship with your neighbor, and in your relationship with God.

  In Acts 8, Shalom was disturbed due to this great persecution of the followers of Jesus.

Acts 8:3  But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

All was not well.   And when this persecution hit hard, as we discussed the last few weeks, the people scattered.  Philip ended up in Samaria.  Some went further north up to Damascus in Syria.  That brings us to chapter 9.

Acts 9:1-9   But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?  And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

We have all heard news reports of rare incidents in which police mistakenly raid the wrong house.   Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of your front door being bashed open, a flash-bang grenade going off in your living room, and then a heavily armed SWAT team entering your home.  Unfortunately, it happens.  Sometimes the tip the police received was incorrect, or the address was incomplete, or a simple error was made. The police did not mean to raid the wrong house.  They had warrants signed by a judge granting them authority to enter the home at that address.  They were well-trained.  They were putting forth their best effort in the raid.  They were highly motivated to apprehend the suspect and protect the public. But they were utterly wrong.

That is what is happening with Saul in Acts 9.  Saul has papers from the high priest authorizing him to go into homes, arrest people, and bring them back to Jerusalem.  Saul is one of the best-trained scholars of scripture alive in his day.  He is giving 100% effort to rid the country of these Jesus followers, to protect the public from heresy.  He is highly motivated, going into homes and dragging out the followers of this splinter group.  And he is entirely wrong.  

In Saul’s mind, he is a soldier defending God’s honor. He is cleaning up Israel. He is protecting the faith. If anyone asked Saul, “Why are you doing this?” he would have said, “Because I love God!”  But he is 100% wrong.  Because sincerity does not make you right, commitment does not equal correctness, and power does not equal purity.   Legal process does not equal morality, nor does strength of conviction make you holy.   Passion without truth is dangerous.  

God has to intervene.  So he throws his own flashbang grenade at Saul’s feet, knocking him to the ground and blinding him.   And the voice from heaven asks Saul, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Not why are you persecuting these people, or why are you persecuting these followers, but why are you persecuting me?  Then Saul asks an essential question: “Who are you, Lord?”

At this point, Paul is aware he is not dealing with humanity.  This blinding flash of light was nothing any human could produce.  Is he dealing with an angel, or God himself?  So he asks, “Who are you, Lord?  (Lord being the equivalent of us saying a very respectful “sir”.)  The voice responds: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  This is a lot for Saul.  First, the voice is Jesus, whom he had been told was dead, crucified as a criminal, a blasphemer.  But instead, Jesus is very much alive.  And Jesus wields the power of God.  And Saul finds that he is not rescuing people from a heresy, but waging war against God himself.  So God gives Saul a three-day timeout.  Three days to consider all of this.  Three days when he can not see.  And he fasts from food and drink.  And you can bet blind Saul prayed, and prayed hard.

Saul thought he was waging war with these heretics who had disturbed the peace of Jerusalem.  But it was Saul who was disturbing the shalom of God by waging this war.  This story is an example of a great paradox of the message of Jesus.  As many of you read in our Advent reading this past week, the prophets say that the Messiah will come as the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6   For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The Messiah is the ‘Prince of Peace.’  And the first to hear the news of Jesus’ birth were the shepherds in the field with their sheep, who heard it from the angels.  We sing it in the hymn, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”:

“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, 
That glorious song of old.
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, 
From Heav’n’s all-gracious King.”

Isaiah said He is the ‘Prince of Peace’.  The angels sang that he comes to bring peace on earth.  But then how do we reconcile what Jesus says here:

Matthew 10:34-36   Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

 How do we reconcile these two passages?  The peace that Jesus brings is first and foremost peace with God.  True shalom with God.  Before Jesus, we had no peace with God.  Paul says it this way:

Romans 8:7-8  “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  

When you are in your sin, there is hostility towards God.  You are living on the king’s land, but you do not follow the king’s rules.  You are a rebel.  You are waging war with God.  The only way to end your rebellion is to ask for forgiveness, which God freely grants through Jesus. And then to begin to live a different life that is not in rebellion to the king’s rule, but to follow him in obedience.  As Paul says in the preceding verse:  

Romans 8:6 “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

You can choose peace with God (shalom) or hostility towards God.  There is no middle ground.  See this again in James:  

James 4:4 (NLT)  Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. 

You have to choose.  Jesus told his disciples that peace with God can be theirs:

John 14:27 (NLT)   I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.  So don’t be troubled or afraid.

And the Bible is consistent.  For though the carol said “it came upon the midnight clear,” “Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, from Heaven’s all-gracious King.”  That is not what the angels said.  Here is what the angels actually said:

Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! 

Wait, there is a catch to that peace with God the angels sang about.  The only ones who get peace are those with whom God is pleased.  Those who are in right relationship with him.  Those who follow his son Jesus in salvation and obedience.  They have peace, shalom, with God. Everyone else is still at war with God.  So let’s see that in a carol that gets it right, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”.  

Hark! The herald angels sing,  
Glory to the newborn King!  
Peace on earth, and mercy mild, 
God and sinners reconciled.

Peace on earth is tied to this:  God and sinners reconciled.  There is no peace for us with God until we are reconciled to him through the forgiveness of our sins and the promise we make to follow him as our Lord and live in obedience to him.  

Now look what happens with Saul.  Saul discovers on the Damascus Road that he and his SWAT teams are raiding the wrong house.  He is an enemy of God.  Once Saul stops fighting Jesus, he begins an incredible journey of reconciliation.  After he is reconciled to God, he will eventually seek fellowship with the same followers he persecuted.  And he will become a leader in this fellowship, a missionary of reconciliation.

Paul calls peace a fruit of the Holy Spirit living within us, and he says:

Romans 12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

But none of that can happen until his heart is made right with God.  Jesus tried to make this clear to his disciples in John 16:

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace…

You may have shalom, peace with God.  You are at peace with God when you are in a right relationship with Him. But that is not the end of the verse.  Keep reading to see the paradox.

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world, you will have tribulation.

If you don’t understand shalom, if you don’t understand the kind of peace Jesus is talking about, then this verse makes no sense.  “Which is it, Jesus, peace or tribulation?”  But when you have peace with God, you are then at war with the world.  You will have tribulation.  And now, finish the verse to see the best news.  

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.

Your enemy, the world, has already been defeated.  The way of this world, what the Bible calls the way of the flesh, was defeated on the cross of Jesus.  Sin, which kept us enemies of God, was defeated, so now we can be friends with God.  And then death was defeated.  Jesus has overcome.  The outcome of the war has been decided.  But the battle still rages within us as long as we persist in disobedience. 

Peace can be ours now if we seek Him and obey Him.  And complete peace, complete shalom, will exist in this world one day.   The Prince of Peace will reign over all, and there will be no more enemies.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.  

Saul’s transformation begins with two simple questions: the first, “Who are You, Lord?”  This is the most critical question.  Who is Jesus to Saul at this moment of the blinding light?  He is no one to Saul, just a teacher whom the Romans killed.  But it is in this moment that Saul realizes who Jesus really is, the living Son of God.  And this makes all the difference for Saul.

Then the second question:  “What do you want me to do?” Now that Saul knows who Jesus is, he wants to listen to Jesus and obey him.  This is shema, hear and obey.  And that leads to peace with God.   Shema leads to shalom.  You have to shema (listen and obey) before you find shalom, peace with God.  Peace with God requires listening and obeying.  In Acts 8, Saul’s relationship with God is like a child pulling on a rope in a tug-of-war against his father.  He pulls with all his strength until he is exhausted. It is hopeless.  Finally, the father smiles at the child.  And the child puts the rope aside, and the father embraces the child. The child’s peace didn’t come from winning the battle—it came from surrendering into the father’s arms.   It is here in Acts 9 that Saul drops the rope and surrenders to Jesus. So must we.

It was Christmas Day, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was listening to the church bells ring out, representing the angels’ proclamation of peace on earth, goodwill to men.  But Longfellow had no peace.  It is 1863.  He recently lost his wife in a tragic accident.  And his son, Charles, was away fighting in our country’s brutal Civil War. And in the midst of this turmoil, he pens these words:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
, Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
the hearthstones of a continent,
and made forlorn
the households born
of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.  Jesus is indeed the Prince of Peace.  Jesus wants us to have that shalom with him, that right relationship that comes with His forgiveness and salvation.  The peace that comes by shema — listening to the voice of God and being obedient.  

This Christmas season, I want you to consider your peace with God.  How is that relationship?  Could it use more communication?  Could it use more obedience?  We earnestly seek the peace of God in our lives, even as we yearn for the day when God’s peace will reign supreme in this world.  We look forward to that day when God redeems the earth, that day when all is well.

December 3, 2025 –  Philip follows the Holy Spirit – Shema— Acts #23

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , , ,

December 3, 2025 –  Philip follows the Holy Spirit – Shema— Acts #23
Acts 8:26-40

Are you ready to be a disciple?

Shema – it means “listen” in Hebrew, but it means much more than “listen”.  Because in the Jewish culture of the Old Testament, listening implies obedience.  There is no concept of listening to God without being obedient.  It is just wrong; it is a sin.

This word is so important. It is the title and the first word of the prayer every Jewish person has prayed several times a day for thousands of years.  The prayer is a collection of passages from Deuteronomy.  And this is the first prayer Mary and Joseph taught Jesus as a small boy.  And he prayed this prayer every day.  And this concept of shema is critical to a follower of Jesus. 

We continue our story of Philip in Acts 8, and in this story, Philip shows us what it looks like to listen for God’s voice and obey without delay.  Through him, God brings salvation to a man who was seeking truth but didn’t yet know where to find it.

Acts 8:26-40   Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”
And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 
And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

Philip was in Samaria experiencing revival.  Things were going great!  People were coming to know Jesus as their Messiah.  Lives were being changed.  Miracles were happening.  People were being healed.  Crowds were eager to hear the Gospel.  It was the perfect situation for a church leader.  Then God says, “Go south to the desert road.”  Everything is going great, so go to the desert.  How does that make sense?  Leave the crowds?  Leave success?  Leave the work God is blessing? For a desert road?   No preacher today with any sense would leave a place of great success and go to a deserted land.  (You notice preachers rarely get called to leave a big, successful church and go to a tiny, struggling church in the middle of nowhere.) That desert road led to Gaza.  Now that is a place that you probably wouldn’t want to go today.  It wasn’t much better in Philip’s day.  But God had an assignment for Philip, and Philip didn’t argue… he listened and obeyed.

Many of God’s most significant assignments begin with an interruption in routine and a disruption in comfort. Abraham is minding his own business at home, and God calls him to leave everything he knows.  Moses is tending sheep, just as he has done every day for the past 40 years.  He has a good life in Midian. He has no thoughts of ever returning to the country he was kicked out of.  But God interrupts his life and gives him a difficult task. Mary is engaged to be married.  It was an exciting time in her life. She was planning a wedding, getting everything ready to set up a household with Joseph.  And then God interrupts her in a significant way.

God’s task assignments often come with few details.  Now this can be frustrating at times.  We like to know the whole plan, including all the details, before we set out on a project.  We want to know how long it will last, how much it will cost, and what equipment we will need. But God only gave Philip step 1:   Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.    No mention of why.  No mention of what he would do there. But this is the way God usually works.  He rarely gives anyone the big picture up front.

We often miss this when we read the scripture in the psalms:

Psalm 119:105   Your word is a lamp to my feet… 

What is a lamp to my feet?  They didn’t have flashlights in those days.  They used oil lamps held by a string near their feet.  It provided just enough light for the next step.  They couldn’t see any further ahead.  And this is typically how God reveals his plans or tasks for us.  Just one step at a time.  That requires trust.  That requires faith.  

God sends a messenger to Philip.  (That is literally what the word translated ‘angel’ in our English Bibles means.  Both ‘angelos’ in Greek and ‘malach’ in Hebrew mean messenger.)  A few verses later in this passage, it says, “And the Spirit said to Philip…”  I am not sure that there is a big difference in these two statements of the delivery of God’s message to Philip.  In Jewish thought, there is little distinction, as seen in Acts 23:9.

Acts 23:9   Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?”

God very rarely speaks through messengers who take human form.  And contrary to every painting you have ever seen, angels do not have wings.   Angels in human form are the least frequent way God sends messages.  He occasionally speaks through dreams or visions, but the most common way God speaks is through scripture. When you read the Bible, it is God’s word to you.  It is God speaking to you.  And we pray to converse with God.  Mark Batterson says that God most frequently speaks in whispers.  In his book, “Whisper”, Batterson notes that to hear someone whisper, you have to draw close to them.  God speaks to those who draw close.  And God speaks to those who listen.

But the question is: Do we give God a chance to speak to us?  

Do we allow God to speak in our prayer time?  Are we listening, not just talking?  Prayer is meant to be a conversation, not a monologue.  

When we read Scripture, do we allow time for God to speak? Tim Makie of the Bible Project frequently refers to the Bible as meditation literature.  It is not meant to be read like a cookie recipe.  It is not meant to be read like a newspaper or a history book.  It is intended to be read slowly and meditated upon.  Often God has something to whisper to you when you read scripture.  (That is when I most often hear God speak to me.)

Do we make space for God to speak to us?  If every moment of our life is filled with noise, we will miss the whisper of God.  Have you ever wondered why printed books have margins?  They could save a lot of paper if they just used all the space on the page instead of leaving an inch on all sides.  But pages printed to the edge are harder to read.  Your eyes can’t track the lines as well.  The margins are necessary.   And we need margin in our lives.  We fill every moment with constant input, from others or from a television or radio.  There is no blank time, no margin.  It is in quietness that the Spirit often whispers.

God speaks — but do we pause long enough to hear Him?

God speaks to the obedient.   You may not hear God speak because you weren’t obedient to the last request.  If Philip had not been obedient to God’s order to go to the desert, He would not have been in a position for the next instruction.  Only after he has followed God to the desert can he see the chariot, the Ethiopian, and the scroll.  You have to be obedient in the small things that you may not understand to be in a position to do the task God has for you.

But Philip follows God’s instruction to travel to the desert road.  Then he sees a man from south of Egypt, the land called Cush in the Old Testament.  (Currently known as northern Sudan.  This man is an official in the court of the Kandake (the queen mother).  (“The king of Ethiopia was venerated as the child of the sun and regarded as too sacred a personage to discharge the secular functions of royalty; these were performed on his behalf by the queen-mother, who bore the dynastic title Kandakē.”  NICNT  FF Bruce 

He has apparently been to the recent Jewish festival of Pentecost.  He is what they called a God-fearer.  He believes there is a god named Yehovah, and he is convinced of His power, but he has not fully committed. Today, we would call him a seeker.   He may have witnessed, or at least heard about, the commotion in the temple courtyard at Pentecost, and may have heard some talk about Jesus.  But he is going home confused.

God’s plan is good.  His timing is flawless.  Look at this: This person, who has been seeking God but not understanding everything, is alone on the road (he has time on his hands) and trying to read scripture about the Messiah.  He wants to understand it, but he needs help.  So God arranged Philip to be there at that moment.   It is a perfect plan.  But it all hinges on one thing—the obedience of Philip.

God’s great plan will fail if Philip does not follow it.  What happens is Philip says no?  If Philip says, “No way God is calling me to go down that desert road.  That road to Gaza is dangerous.  I am needed here in Samaria.  I am leading a massive movement here.  I am too important to the work being done here to waste that time on the road.  Notice that from Samaria, Philip will travel 50-70 miles on foot.  It will be a 3-4 day journey each way.  This will take Philip away from his work in Samaria for more than a week. And why?  He does not know any details.  The only answer he has to the question of why is obedience.

So what happens to that Ethiopian if Philip is not obedient?  Even if Philip quits on God, God is not going to quit on that Ethiopian.  God is not going to abandon a seeker.  What does God do when people fail to follow and mess up his plan?  Well, fortunately, there is a book that tells us precisely what  God does and how he deals with people.  So let’s look in the Old Testament to see two ways God accomplishes his plan when we are disobedient. 

1.  He gives the disobedient person another chance to follow.  Our example is Jonah.  God had a great plan for turning Nineveh, the capital of the nation of Assyria, to him.  It was up to Jonah to go and preach.  But Jonah was disobedient and got on a boat headed in the opposite direction.  Did God give up on Ninevah?  Did God give up on Jonah?  No.  God created a storm, and God ordained the sailors’ lots to tell them Jonah was the problem.  And then God rescued Jonah from drowning with a great fish.  And then God asks Jonah again, “So how about now, Jonah?  What do you think about going to Nineveh today?

God went to a lot of trouble to encourage Jonah to be obedient, to give him another chance.  God is forgiving of Jonah’s disobedience.  He shows Jonah great mercy.  Do you remember why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place?  Because he knew God was merciful and forgiving.  Jonah knew that God would give the Ninevites a chance to repent.   And Jonah didn’t really want the Ninevites to have an opportunity for repentance.  They were his enemy.  But Jonah finally obeys and goes, and God shows mercy on the people of Nineveh.  And the end of the 4-chapter book teaches much about mercy to all people. But what would God have done if Jonah had not finally decided to be obedient? 

2.  If God’s chosen person for a task refuses to be obedient, then God chooses another person to do the task.  For an example of this, we look at King Saul in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 13-16.  God chose Saul to be king over Israel and lead his people faithfully.  But Saul repeatedly disobeyed God’s commands.  I’ll briefly mention two specific examples: He was impatient and did not wait for the priest Samuel to perform the sacrifices before battle, so he offered them himself.  He was not a priest and was not authorized to make any sacrifices.  Secondly, he refused to carry out God’s instructions concerning the Amalekites.   The Amalekites were the nation that refused the children of Israel passage through their land, forcing them to take a considerable detour.  So Saul was to conquer the Amalekites, and everything in the city belonged to God.  No man of Saul’s army was to take any plunder from the attack.  And Saul conquered the Amalekites but allowed his people to take cattle and sheep from the land, even though God had forbidden it.  So after a long history of Saul’s disobedience, God tells the prophet, Samuel, this:

1 Samuel 15:10-11   The word of Yehovah came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.

God has watched Saul, his chosen person, be disobedient so many times that God regrets giving him the job of king.  God has given him chance after chance, but Saul refuses to be obedient. So Samuel goes to Saul, who tells him, “Look, I destroyed the Amalekites just as God said to do.”  And Samuel asks Saul, “Then what are all these sheep and cattle doing here?”  “Oh,” Saul says, “we took the best of the sheep and cattle from the Amalakites to sacrifice them to God.”   So Samuel says:

1 Samuel 15:22-23   And Samuel said, “Has Yehovah as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of Yehovah, he has also rejected you from being king.

In other words, “You’re fired.”  God will appoint someone else to do the job of king, because you can not be obedient.  God then sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, David, a young shepherd boy, whose best qualification for kingship is his obedience.

Look at what Samuel said.  Listen and obey — shema.  What Saul did would be like someone today doing something in disobedience to God to make a lot of money and then excusing their behavior by saying, “Well, I’m going to give some of that money to the church.”  God doesn’t need your money.  He wants you to obey his voice.  He wants you to listen and obey.  You can not obey if you don’t listen.

Thankfully, Philip in Acts 8 listened and was obedient.  He went without hesitation to the desert road. Had he hesitated, he would have missed that divine appointment.  But he was able to explain the scriptures of Isaiah to the Ethiopian who accepted Jesus and asked to be baptized. There are people around us who are spiritually hungry — often quietly.  Like the Ethiopian, they may have status, authority, wealth, education, or influence.  But what they really need is understanding.  There are many people you encounter who look like they have it all together, but they are quietly asking:  How do I make sense of life?  Is this Jesus stuff real?  What am I missing?  God wants to position obedient disciples alongside searching souls, but the disciples must listen and be obedient to the call.  Sometimes all you have to do is walk across the room.  

Do you hear God’s message to you?

Some people say they have never heard God speak.  Maybe you haven’t heard God’s voice, but you have seen its evidence.  God’s initial word, spoken to the cosmos in Genesis 1, is still echoing through the universe.  He said, “Let there be light”, and “let there be stars”, and in our universe, we now have evidence that stars are still being formed.  God’s word is not finished.

Does God still speak?   I can testify that God is still speaking.  You may never experience an angel, a divine messenger.  Most people in the Bible never did either.  But He speaks through his word and through others, and through whispers.   The real question is:  Are you listening? Or is God’s voice crowded out by other voices?   We also see in this passage that God honors those who seek him.  I challenge you to seek God this next week earnestly.  Spend some time in the quiet.  Spend time meditating on His word.  Listen for his whispers.  And be obedient.  As Samuel said, 

1 Samuel 3:10.  Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

August 19 –  Arm Wrestling and Cornerstones — Acts #9

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , ,

August 19 –  Arm Wrestling and Cornerstones — Acts #9
Acts 4:1-12

So, ‘cornerstone’ you can see in the Bible, but ‘arm wrestling’?  We are going to look at two common visual concepts that run as themes throughout the Bible.  If you understand where these themes come from, it will make it more meaningful for you when you encounter cornerstones in the Bible, or a contest to see whose arm is the mightiest. 

One of my goals in this blog is not just to share what God is teaching me from the scriptures, but also to help you read and understand the Bible better yourself. When you are reading the Bible, you need to pay attention to references from the Old Testament.  If you don’t know the context for the Old Testament verse being quoted in the New Testament, then you should stop reading and go back and read the Old Testament passage that the verse comes from.  Because the writers of the New Testament assume you already know this.  And with over 300 direct quotes of the Old Testament in the New Testament and over 1000 allusions to Old Testament characters and events, you can’t read a chapter in the New Testament without running into 3-4 OT verses or allusions.  Today, we are going to look at two examples of this as we see Peter’s response to the court.

To recap where we were in Acts, Peter and John encounter a paralyzed man, and Jesus heals him.  It causes a commotion in the temple courtyard, prompting Peter to preach and explain that Jesus is the Messiah.  And we pick up the story there:

Acts 4:1-4   And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

Peter and John are preaching and are interrupted by the temple officials, who are all “greatly annoyed”.  Who is ”greatly annoyed” and why?  The captain of the temple is the number two man in charge of the temple (behind the High Priest). He is the commander of the temple police and is responsible for maintaining order in the temple.  He sees this crowd gathering and considers a potential riot. That is why he is annoyed.

The Sadducees, a group of wealthy priests, are upset because Peter and John are preaching about resurrection.  They don’t believe in a resurrection from the dead, and you would think they were living in the US in our day, because they have no tolerance for anyone who has an opinion that is different from theirs. These Sadducees see Peter and John as heretics.   So they will do everything they can to silence them, berate them, vilify them, and probably unfriend them and block them on Facebook.  (Don’t be a Sadducee.  It’s okay for people to have different opinions and still be friends, even if they’re on the same team.  We talked about this last week.  Remember, Peter is dead wrong on his theology about the Gentiles, but that doesn’t mean God can’t use him in a mighty way.)

The other priests are annoyed because these disciples keep talking about Jesus.  They thought they had put an end to Jesus a month ago, but these guys just won’t shut up.  

None of these people has a problem with the paralyzed man being healed.  Another beggar off the Temple gates is a good thing, but don’t give credit to that Jesus.  They have to do something.  So they arrested Peter and John and put them in custody.  Our culture sees incarceration as a form of punishment for a crime.  But historians tell us that neither the Jews nor the Romans at this time officially used imprisonment as punishment for a crime.  It was merely a place to hold someone until the time of the trial.  (Though the holding period could become extended and be an ‘unofficial punishment’ — ask Paul or John the Baptist).

Luke tells us it was already evening, so it was too late for a trial that day; it would have to wait until tomorrow.  Do you remember when this story began?  It was approaching 3 in the afternoon, for Peter and John were heading into the temple for the afternoon service.  It is now 6 pm.  These officials interrupted Peter and John after 2-3 hours of preaching.  (And you thought a 30-minute sermon was a long one.)  

Acts 4:5-7   On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” 

So they all gathered the next morning to question Peter and John.  Again, what they are really concerned about is the message they were preaching and giving Jesus credit for the healing. 

Acts 4:8-10   Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 

Did you notice?  The paralyzed man is “standing” before them.  The authorities had brought him in as a witness to what Peter and John were preaching, but Peter used him as a witness to their “good deed.”  So if you want to know who is responsible for doing this great deed, know that it is Jesus who you crucified.  Peter knows they can’t refute the fact that this man was healed, so he uses the opportunity to give Jesus credit again.  But Peter doesn’t stop there:

Acts 4:11-12   This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Peter brings in an Old Testament illustration everyone there would recognize – the cornerstone.  Now, if you are reading this scripture at home, you can keep reading and have a pretty good idea of what Peter is talking about.  But Peter is speaking under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and there is a lot more there, so we need to stop and figure it out.

This was a point these religious leaders would not have missed.  They knew the scripture Peter was referring to.  It was a psalm that every devout Jew would know.  This psalm is one of the Hallel Psalms (113-118), sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for the annual festivals.  This particular psalm was quoted as part of a liturgy on entering the temple gates, and it was sung at the end of the Passover meal every year.  Every Jewish child in Peter’s day knew this psalm just as every child today knows the words to “Jingle Bells” that they sing one season every year.  But do you know the psalm he is quoting?  This Psalm is quoted 24 times in the New Testament.  So let’s take a good look at Psalm 118.

Again, one of my goals today is to help you know how to read and understand the Bible. So I want to show you two things in Psalm 118 that are themes all through the Bible. Understanding the source of the theme will also help you grasp the verses that use it.  So we will look at ‘God’s mighty right hand’ and then the idea of the cornerstone.

Psalm 118 begins and ends with the same statement:

Psalm 118:1  Oh give thanks to Yehovah, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! 
Psalm 118:29  Oh give thanks to Yehovah, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!

The psalm begins by recounting times of trouble and then celebrates God’s deliverance from them.

Psalm 118:13-16  I was pushed back and about to fall, but Yehovah helped me.  Yehovah is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.  Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: “Yehovah’s right hand has done mighty things!
Yehovah’s right hand is lifted high; 
Yehovah’s right hand has done mighty things!”

Things were looking bad for the nation, but God stepped in and delivered them.  So there is celebration in the dwellings of the righteous, and the celebration is about what God’s right hand has done.  What is this emphasis on God’s right hand?  All through the Old Testament, you will read about God’s strong arm or mighty right hand.  Do you know where that comes from?  If you have been to Egypt, you would know.

In September, I will be back in Egypt for my fourth trip there.  When people ask me why I want to go to Egypt, I could talk about the incredible pyramids and temples there, the thousands of years of history you can see there, or the great food.  But the main reason I want to go to Egypt is to help me understand the Bible.  

When God’s chosen people, Israel, were not yet a nation, when they were just a family, just 70 of them went down to Egypt during a famine, and they ended up staying there for 400 years.  And it was in those 400 years that they grew into a nation of hundreds of thousands.  In Egypt, they were constantly exposed to cultural and religious motifs that ended up being used in their own Bible.  They used visual imagery and concepts about the world and God that everyone had learned from 400 years in Egypt.  Since most of us don’t come from families that spent 400 years in Egypt, we didn’t grow up knowing these things.

Egyptians carved their history and religious beliefs into the walls of their temples. Their temples are covered with engravings top to bottom. They didn’t have books, so their temples were their Bibles.  The Israelites knew of the many gods of Egypt inscribed on those walls.  They saw how the leader of their country, Pharaoh, was depicted as a god.  And when they were enslaved, they would have been commanded to attend the festivals and stand outside the Temple as the Egyptian Gods were paraded into the Temple.  All they knew about organized religion came from Egypt.

Looking at these texts and carved temples, we see that Egyptian pharaohs were frequently depicted in the same pose.  Back in the 1980s, a group called the Bangles told us how to “Walk like an Egyptian,” but if you want to look like a pharaoh, here is how you do it.  Left foot out, left arm outstretched, right arm ready to strike down your enemies. This iconic pose symbolized the pharaoh’s role as the supreme, divine ruler of Egypt.  This is the god pose.  We still have this picture in our mind of a mighty hero in this exact pose today.

Football season has begun.  You will see this pose a lot.

This is the Narmer Tablet that dates to 3100 BC.  For 400 years, Egypt held the children of Israel in slavery and told them that Pharaoh was the most powerful god.  Everywhere they look, they see images of Pharaoh as the greatest.  So when God sends Moses to speak to this person who proclaims himself the most powerful person in the world, this is what God says:

Exodus 6:1  Then Yehovah said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”
Exodus 6:6  Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am Yehovah, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.

God says, “Hey Pharaoh, you think you are something with your outstretched arm and your mighty right hand?  Just wait until you see what I do with my outstretched arm and my mighty right hand.”

Thus began a contest between the God of the Israelites and the gods of Egypt.  Whose god will be victorious?  All the Egyptians knew that Pharaoh was the greatest.  They thought this God of the Israelites couldn’t be much of a god, for he was God only of a bunch of slaves. But you know how that story ends.  God rains down 10 plagues, each one targeting a specific god of Egypt, the last one targeting the family of Pharaoh himself.  And then the final victory comes when Pharaoh and his army drown in the sea.

Following Pharaoh and Egypt’s defeat, numerous references in the Old Testament emerge, describing God as having a strong hand and outstretched arm.  Almost all of these refer to God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt or his future deliverance from another enemy.   For thousands of years, Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world.  And every time you see this description of God’s arm and hand, God is reminding them that He is greater.

Here are a few examples:

Deuteronomy 4:33-34  Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

Deuteronomy 5:15   You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yehovah your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, Yehovah your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

Deuteronomy 11:1-2   You shall therefore love Yehovah your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of Yehovah your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm.

Jeremiah 32:21  You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and outstretched arm, and with great terror.

And then, when the people in Isaiah’s day were under attack by a foreign nation and they were questioning why God hadn’t delivered them, they were told:

Isaiah 59:1-2  Surely the arm of Yehovah is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

God’s arm is not too short to save.  That is not the problem.  He is still God with the outstretched arm and the mighty right hand.  The problem is you.  God can not hear your requests for help because your sins have “hidden His face”.  Your sins have come between you and God.

And then, in the New Testament, when Mary is pregnant with Jesus, she sings a song of praise to God. She praises him for his deliverance of her people in the past, as she looks to the coming deliverance through Jesus. She says:

Luke 1:49-55   For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.  And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;  He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

The God of the Bible has not changed.  The God of the Old Testament is still the God of the New Testament.  His arm has not shortened.  His strength has not faded.  He has saved his people in the past; he continues to save his people.   But those who stand against God will find the same fate as Pharaoh, the man who thought he was God.

Back to Psalm 118.  It continues with the portion sung as the pilgrims headed to Jerusalem for Passover approach the city and God’s Temple. You can see their progression in the psalm.  As they near the gates of the city:

Psalm 118:19-20  Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to Yehovah. This is the gate of Yehovah; the righteous shall enter through it.

As they see the great stones of the temple:

Psalm 118:21-22  I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

As they enter the temple, there is a very familiar verse.

Psalm 118:25-26   Save us, [Hosannah] we pray, Yehovah, Yehovah, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yehovah! We bless you from the house of Yehovah.

And finally, they arrive at the altar for the festival sacrifice:

Psalm 118:27  Bind the festival sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!

And then the psalm ends as it started:

Psalm 118:29  Oh give thanks to Yehovah, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!

But let’s back up to verses 21-22 about the cornerstone.

Psalm 118:21-22  I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

We all know what a cornerstone is. However, most of the ones we see today are decorative.  But when a foundation is being laid, you have to get that first corner block laid straight.  It determines how the rest of the building will be.  How did people before the days of Jesus interpret this?  Who did they see as this cornerstone?

Because the people sing this psalm during the festivals to celebrate God delivering them from Egypt or later from other enemies, some see the nation of Israel as the one rejected by the other nations, but chosen by God. And some say it is David himself. He was chosen to be the king, even though others, including his father, would not have chosen him.  He was rejected by the current king, Saul, and Saul tried to kill him.  But God delivered David from Saul and his other enemies.  Then David becomes the first king of an everlasting dynasty.  He becomes the cornerstone of the kingdom.  For 1000 years, this Psalm was interpreted as talking about Israel or David as the cornerstone.

Then Jesus comes and applies this psalm to his day.  In the week of Jesus’ crucifixion, Psalm 118 is on everyone’s mind.  They have sung it as they traveled on the way to Jerusalem for Passover.  They sang it to Jesus as he entered the city on the donkey, “Hosannah!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Psalm 118:25-26).   And then Jesus in the temple that week tells the story of a vineyard owner who leased his farm to others.  He sent servants to collect his payment, and they refused to pay what they owed, and they abused them or killed them.  So the vineyard owner sent his son, thinking they would respect his son.  But they kill him.  And then Jesus asks the priests and scribes:

Mark 12:10-11  Have you not read this Scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?’

Jesus asks the religious leaders in the Temple if they have ever read Psalm 118.  (Of course, they had.  Every child had this memorized and had been singing it all week.)  But they understood what Jesus was saying.  Jesus claimed to be the son of the vineyard owner in his parable and the cornerstone of the Temple from Psalm 118.  The scribes and the priests are the builders who rejected him.  Jesus is adding a new layer of interpretation to Psalm 118.  He would be the cornerstone of a new Temple of followers.  

Then in Acts 4, Peter picks up this same Psalm to let the religious leaders know that this Jesus, who brought healing to this paralyzed man, is the cornerstone that they rejected, but chosen by God to be the beginning of a new deliverance, a new salvation.  

So who is the cornerstone of Psalm 118?  Is it Israel, is it David, or is it Jesus?  The answer is yes, and this is an important concept.  God is consistent in how he deals with his people.  His character does not change.  That is just who God is.  So you will see him do that over and over again.  So you see multiple layers of meaning.  Israel was seen to be a type of cornerstone, upon which God would build his kingdom.  But Israel didn’t fulfill his plan to take his message to the nations.  David was seen to be a type of cornerstone, as the beginning of a line of kings.  But David could not be the messiah.  He, like us, was a man of many sins.  But Jesus comes as a descendant in the line of David to be the true cornerstone.  

Israel was a type of cornerstone.  David was a type of cornerstone.  Jesus is the cornerstone.

So Paul tells the Gentiles in Ephesus:

Ephesians 2:19-22  So then you are … built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

God is making a new temple with Jesus as the cornerstone, and you are a stone in that temple, a dwelling place for God’s Holy Spirit.  And we know this is the meaning Peter intended when he spoke to these religious leaders in Acts 4, because Peter comes back to this same scripture when he is writing his first letter from Rome to the churches in Asia Minor.  

1 Peter 2:4-6  As you come to Jesus, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Jesus is the cornerstone.   But Peter is not through with the imagery.  There is one more aspect of the cornerstone imagery that we must discuss, and Peter has picked up this other aspect of the Biblical cornerstone motif that he got from the prophet Isaiah.  So Peter continues:

1 Peter 2:7-8  So the honor is for you who believe. But for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

Peter is quoting Isaiah 8:14, where God says he can also be a “stone of stumbling.”  

Isaiah 8:14-15  And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.

The Bible says the stone God has placed for us can be either a cornerstone that we may build upon or a rock that we will stumble over and fall. Isaiah comes back to this in chapter 28, speaking against the leaders of Israel who, in times of threat of war, turned to Egypt for help instead of turning to God:

Isaiah 28:16-18  “So this is what the Sovereign Yehovah says: 
“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.” …“Your covenant with death [Egypt] will be annulled; your agreement with the realm of the dead will not stand.”

They abandoned God as their refuge in a time of need.  Instead of having faith that God would deliver them as he said, and depending on him as their cornerstone, they panicked and sought help from Egypt.  God tells them a deal with Egypt is a deal with death and the grave.  God is the only one who can deliver them.  There is no other god, there is no other with a mighty right hand and outstretched arm.  There are no other gods. That is why Peter, after mentioning the cornerstone, says this:

Acts 4:12  And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

There is no other.  Jesus is a stone in your path.  Either He can be the cornerstone on which you build a good faith, upon which you are built as part of the Temple of God, or He can be the stone upon which you stumble.  The point is that everyone has to decide what they are going to do with Jesus.  He will not be ignored.  You either accept the gospel, accept Jesus, or you reject him.  This is the message for us also.  Will we humble ourselves and worship the only God who delivers us with an outstretched arm and a mighty right hand?   

Bottom Line:  There are some important themes and motifs that are used in our Scriptures.  You can’t read a several-thousand-year-old document and be lazy.  It won’t work.  And this document, our Bible, is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.  Its treasures are deep and profound.  You need to go slowly and research the context and culture.  You need to know it well enough, through years of study, that you begin to recognize these recurrent themes.  I beg you to study it to understand better how God would have us live.

April 27, 28 A.D.  – Jesus rides in a parade, rearranges furniture, and kills a tree.— The Year of the Lord’s Favor #80

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

Week 63 — Jesus rides in a parade, rearranges furniture, and kills a tree.
Matthew 21:18-19

As we follow Jesus’ ministry day by day, in 28 AD, this is the week of Passover, the week between Palm Sunday and the Resurrection.  At times over the past year, I had only had one short scripture passage to cover the events of that week in Jesus’ ministry.  But the week between the triumphal entry and the resurrection is so important to the story of Jesus that there is a lot of material: Seven chapters of Matthew, five chapters of Mark and Luke, and eight chapters of John.   Almost one-fourth of the material in the four gospels is about this final week.

There is no way to cover the material in those 20 chapters.   So I want to step back this week and get one aspect of the big picture of what is going on in the story of the Bible in that week.  The Bible is one cohesive story of how God is working to reestablish his relationship with his creation, and the key to that plan is what happens in this week and 50 days later.  Jesus does three symbolic acts at the beginning of that week.  We have already discussed two of them, so today, we will look at the third one and see how these fit into that big picture.

Matthew 21:18-19   In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.  

I know what you’re thinking.  “So, out of 20 chapters of Gospel Material from Jesus’ final week, this is what you pick as a focal passage?  And why is Jesus hating on a fig tree? “

At the beginning of Jesus’ passion week, he performs three significant symbolic acts, which carry a lot of meaning to his followers who are familiar with the scriptures. He rides a donkey into the city (the Palm Sunday triumphal entry that we discussed two weeks ago). He drives the money changers and animal salespeople out of the temple area (which we discussed last year), and then he curses a fig tree.

These may seem out of character for the Jesus we have seen this past year—that meek and mild Jesus who told people not to talk about his miracles, who was leaving town when he gathered crowds to try to fly under the radar, and who mostly avoided confrontation. Here, we see him in a big parade entering the capital city, jumping into the middle of a confrontation in the temple, and then performing a miracle of destruction. What has changed? Let’s look at these events.

The cleansing of the Temple happens twice in Jesus’ ministry.  Both at the same time of the year, just before Passover..  Every Jewish person at that same time every year would, in preparation for the feast of Unleavened Bread, go to great lengths to remove every bit of yeast from their homes.  This is to commemorate the exodus from Egypt when they left after Passover and ate only unleavened bread, because they didn’t have time to let the bread rise as they hurried out of Egypt.  Yeast came to represent sin and corruption.  So every home would be cleansed to remove any traces of yeast every year.  Walls would be scrubbed, and cooking utensils boiled in water.  This still happens in Orthodox Jewish homes today.  Jesus enters the Temple and sees that the House of God is full of corruption and takes it upon himself to do some spring cleaning in preparation for the festival.  This has great symbolic meaning to the people of Jesus’ day.  (You can go back to my blog entry of April 10 last year to review.)

Then there is this episode about the fig tree, which seems odd to us.  Again, these are very symbolic acts.  To understand what is really going on in these events, you have to have a good working knowledge of the first 2/3 of the Bible.  But most people don’t spend much time in the ‘First Testament.’  We call it the ‘Old Testament.’   Why study something old when you have something newer?   I really don’t like the ‘old/new’ nomenclature.  Jesus just called the Old Testament ‘the Scriptures.’  The only Bible that Jesus and the disciples ever read is the one that very few people now ever read.

But the Old Testament is the context for the New Testament. Jesus assumes you have a working knowledge of the Scriptures when he talks. Ten percent of his teachings are quotes from the Old Testament.  If you don’t understand his quotes, then you misunderstand what Jesus is saying.  These acts are a good example.  We miss what God is communicating if we are ignorant of the context and connection to the Scriptures.  So bear with me while I go way back to give you the big picture you need to understand the fig tree.

The key to these incidents is found in Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament.  

Malachi 3:1-2a “And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says Yehovah Tzavaot. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

Let me put this verse in its historical context for you.  The Jews were conquered by Babylon in 586 BC.  The Babylonians destroyed the city and the temple. Most of the Jews were taken to Babylon, where they lived in exile for 70 years.  When they finally returned, they rebuilt the wall around the city and the temple.  But they didn’t have the riches of Solomon to build the temple this time, and this temple they built was a sad imitation of the grand structure that had been.  The people came back from Babylon expecting to have all the promises of the prophets come true, that the Messiah would come and set up God’s kingdom over Israel and restore the nation with a time of prosperity, justice, and peace.

But the people don’t see that, so in Malachi, they complain to God, 

“Hey God, things are going very well.”  

And God could answer, 

“You’re telling me, I allowed your country to be conquered because of your sins, hoping that the time of exile would lead to repentance and that you would come back ready to truly follow me and my commandments and abandon your idols.  But you have not repented.  You are committing the same sins as your ancestors did, which got them exiled.”

The people keep complaining to God. (The book has six disputes between the people and God), And he says, 

“You are on my last nerve with all this griping and complaining and bad behavior.”  

(Or maybe that was my wife talking to one of my sons in the backseat of the car one day.)  But Malachi says it this way:

Malachi 2:17  “You have wearied Yehovah with your words.”    [He is tired of your griping.]

They are asking, “Where are you, God?”   Why are they asking this?  They have been back in the land for almost 100 years.  They had rebuilt the temple, and everyone came to the grand opening except God.   He didn’t show up.  To understand this, we have to go back even further.

Remember when Israel first encountered Yehovah in the wilderness of Sinai.  They had escaped from Egypt, and 50 days later came to Mt Sinai.  God invited them to come up on the mountain with him, but on that day, God came on the mountain with a great cloud of smoke, and with fire and the sound of a loud shofar, like a roaring wind.  And it scared the people so that they would not go up on the mountain to meet God.   So Moses goes for them, and while up on Mount Sinai, God gives him instructions to build a tabernacle, a tent of meeting.  God told Moses, 

Exodus 25:8  “Have them build me a tabernacle, a holy place so that I might dwell with them.”

God wants to dwell with his people.  He wants to walk with us like he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden.  Sin destroyed the fellowship between humans and God in the Garden, and the whole story of the Bible is God working a way to restore that fellowship so that he may dwell with his people again.

So they built the tabernacle, and when they dedicated it:

Exodus 40:34-38   Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yehovah filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of Yehovah filled the tabernacle.

Leviticus 9:23-24  And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out, they blessed the people, and the glory of Yehovah appeared to all the people. And fire came out from before Yehovah and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

Just like on Mount Sinai, God comes in a cloud with fire.  Since they wouldn’t come up on the mountain, God comes to dwell with them in the cloud and fire and leads them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

 And 400 years later, Solomon builds a more permanent structure. And the nation of Israel was at the pinnacle of its wealth.  So this temple was very impressive.  And when it is time to dedicate the temple:

2 Chronicles 7:1-3    As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of Yehovah filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of Yehovah, because the glory of Yehovah filled Yehovah’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Yehovah on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to Yehovah, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

First at Sinai, then at the tabernacle, and now at Solomon’s temple, God’s presence comes in mighty fashion.  Have you ever been in a church service where you wondered if God was present?  No one left these dedication services wondering if God showed up.  

But things go downhill in Israel, and God punishes the Northern and Southern Kingdoms by allowing them to be conquered by a foreign nation.  Four hundred years after Solomon’s Temple was built, the Jews were conquered by Babylon in 586 BC.  The Babylonians destroyed the city and this wonderful Temple. Most of the Jews were taken to Babylon, where they lived in exile for 70 years.  And that horrible day of destruction is still mourned by Israel today on their calendar on the ninth day of their month of Av.

But the worst part of this tragedy is seen in a vision by the prophet Ezekiel.  Now, most people reading the Bible miss this because Ezekiel is not exactly an easy book to read.  In his vision in Ezekiel 10, he sees God on His throne leave the temple in Jerusalem.  This is that odd vision of the throne chariot with the cherubim and the ‘wheels within wheels.’  God abandoned his temple and allowed the temple to be destroyed.  

Ezekiel 11:23. And the glory of Yehovah went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city.   

(What mountain is on the east?  The Mount of Olives.)

But in Ezekiel, there is hope.  God abandoned the temple, but he didn’t abandon his people, and Ezekiel talked about God preserving a remnant and that God will one day take away the heart of stone and give them a new heart.   And in Ezekiel, we have the vision of the restoration, the valley of dry bones brought back to life.  And finally, in Ezekiel, there is a vision of God’s presence returning to the temple. Ezekiel sees God coming back from the East

Ezekiel 43:1-2   Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east.  And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. 

And 70 years later, Ezekiel’s prophecies started coming true.  A remnant of the people returned from Babylon to Jerusalem and rebuilt the city and the temple, though as I said, it was nowhere near as grand a structure.  And as before, they held a dedication service:

Ezra 6:16-18   And the people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy.  They offered at the dedication of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. And they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their divisions, for the service of God at Jerusalem, as it is written in the Book of Moses.

It was a grand service, and huge numbers of people crowded in to see the spectacle. But something was missing.  God was missing.  There is no great storm of wind, thunder, clouds, and fire that shows God’s presence in the temple.  They set up the altar, but this time, fire didn’t come from heaven to consume the sacrifice.  They have to light the fire themselves, because God doesn’t show up.

That is why the people of Malachi’s day asked, “Where is God? We rebuilt the temple, but he didn’t show up.”

They knew Zechariah had prophesied of the time when God would return.

Zechariah 8:3  Thus says Yehovah: I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the Yehovah Tzavaot, the holy mountain.

So we see in Malachi that they complain that God has not returned as he promised. They had conveniently forgotten the first part of Zechariah, which made it clear to them that this was a conditional promise.  

Zechariah 1:3  Therefore, say to them, Thus declares Yehovah Tzavaot: Return to me, and I will return to you, says Yehovah Tzavaot.

But God explains, “You returned to the land, you returned to the city, but you didn’t return to me.  You haven’t repented.   You are still committing the same sins your fathers did that got them exiled.  So I have not returned to you. 

But when the people complain, Malachi answers, “Oh, God is going to come back to his Temple…”

Malachi 3:1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Yehovah Tzavaot.”

Malachi says that a messenger of the covenant will come, and then God is coming back to his temple, but he may not come exactly like you want him to come.  The next verse, Malachi 3:2a

“But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?”   

Uh-oh… he is coming in judgment.  Malachi is the last prophet in the Old Testament. There would be 400 years of waiting until another prophet comes, until the time Malachi predicted.  And the Gospels tell us the messenger did come, John the Baptist, preaching repentance, and after that, God returns to the temple 

So in his final week, Jesus is again staying at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary in Bethany.  He has his disciples get a donkey from the nearby town of Bethphage.  And Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, with people shouting praise and proclaiming him as king, and he enters the temple. This is the first of those three symbolic acts Jesus did this past week. People of his time easily recognized the symbol of the king being coronated and triumphantly entering the city just as David and Solomon did.  But more than that, God, in the form of Jesus, is coming back to the temple as Zechariah and Malachi prophesied.  And he is coming just as Ezekiel predicted, from the east, from the Mount of Olives.

Ezekiel said, “Behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east.”  The Triumphal Procession on Palm Sunday – God returning to his temple.

And how does Jesus enter the temple?  As Malachi said, He comes not in peace but in judgment.  God’s presence will eventually come, never to depart again.  And it will come with a great sound of rushing and with fire.  But first, God has to deal with the problem of sin.  There has to be a cleansing of the temple first.  Jesus enters the Temple and sees that the House of God is full of corruption, and begins the process of cleaning it out.

Matthew 21:12-13   And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.   He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

He drives out the money changers who are charging exorbitant fees for the special coin that could be used to pay the temple tax. Then he turns over the seats of those selling animals and taking advantage of people who have to purchase animals to sacrifice.  And which animals does Matthew specifically note? The pigeons. They were the sacrifices of the poor who could not afford a sheep or goat.  Religion for profit, stealing money from the poor.

He is coming to judge.  As Malachi asked, “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”  But Jesus is just getting started with the cleansing.  Every time he comes back into the temple, the next week he is coming with his gloves off, he speaks in judgment, especially of the Scribes and Pharisees.  Matthew chapter 23 has 7 statements of woe on these leaders because they are ‘hypocrites,’ ‘false teachers,’ ‘blind guides,’ ‘all show and no substance,’ ‘dead on the inside,’ ‘sons of snakes,’ ‘people who will not enter the kingdom of God.’

This is the same Judgment God had passed on Israel in the past.  Look at the similarities from the prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 7:2-11   Hear the word of Yehovah, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship Yehovah.  This is what the Yehovah Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.  Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!”   If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.

But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.  Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things?   Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?  But I have been watching! declares Yehovah.”

And the third symbolic act we find in Matthew 21:

Matthew 21:18-19   In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.  

He sees this fig tree full of leaves.  And these fig trees produce an early fruit that comes when the leaves appear.  It is not as big as the later harvest of figs in the summer.  This fruit is not as good or mature, but these early figs bring the promise of more mature fruit later.   Early figs in Hebrew are ‘phage.’  And this happened in a town called Bethphage, which is in Hebrew, the house of early figs.

If you know the scriptures (the Old Testament), you know the prophets frequently used this symbol of early figs. I could give a bunch of examples, but we only have time for one.

Micah 3:9-12   Hear this, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel, who despise justice and distort all that is right; who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wickedness.  Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money.

Yet they look for Yehovah’s support and say, “Is not Yehovah among us? No disaster will come upon us.”  Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

Micah 7:1-4  What misery is mine!  There is no cluster of grapes to eat, none of the early figs that I crave.  The faithful have been swept from the land;  not one upright person remains.…

Now is the time of your judgment.

You are wicked and producing no fruit.  You will be judged.

So, as Malachi predicted, God would come back to his Temple, but in judgment. This condemnation of this fruit tree that was all leaves and no fruit is a symbol of Jerusalem. Its leadership is all leaves and no fruit, all show and no substance.  

You have to bear fruit.  This is the message of the messenger that Malachi predicted would come before God came back to the temple.  That messenger was John the Baptist, and he had a 2-part message.

First, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  — Clean your house, God is coming back.  So all these people were coming to repent, and John said, “Hey, that’s great that you want to repent, but you can’t just say ‘I repent ‘ and then get baptized.  Your life has to change.  

Repentance is not something you say; it is something you do.

So the second part of the message is “You have to bring fruits worthy of repentance.”  You have to perform acts that are consistent with the life you have decided to live.  Don’t tell God you are going to change — show God how you have changed.  Then he warns them that a time of judgment is coming— either bear fruit or perish. And Jesus shows that symbolically with the fig tree.

Remember the reason God didn’t come back to the Temple they built in Malachi’s day?  They didn’t repent.  There is a reason Malachi saw the messenger coming before God came back to his Temple.  There is a reason John comes before Jesus.  The Messenger has to preach repentance before God returns. 

 And John told them it is judgment time, either bear fruit or perish.  Because the Kingdom of God is near.  God it about to return to his temple.  And we are in week 63 of this 70-week study.  You don’t want to miss week 70.  Because that is when God returns in power to his temple, as he did before with fire and the sound of a rushing windstorm.  But first, the temple must be cleansed.   First, there must be repentance.

Repentance is the necessary step everyone must take before establishing a relationship with God, and it is a step we must all continue to take as we walk with Jesus.  The old man dies hard.  We want to make our own rules.  We want to go the way that seems right to us, even though we are warned it leads to destruction.

Don’t miss the story of the fig tree.   But I can’t finish this morning without looking at Jesus’ other story of the fig tree Jesus tells in Luke:

Luke 13:6-9   And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.  And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’  And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure.  Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Why does this tree get a second chance when the other fig tree is condemned immediately? This Fig tree has been barren for years.  It is just taking up space in the vineyard.  How do we reconcile these two stories?   What is the difference?

This tree has an advocate—a vinedresser who intervenes and asks for mercy on its behalf. Someone who will show this tree more care and love in an effort to encourage it to produce fruit.  Thanks be to God that we have an advocate.

Romans 8:34. Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

1 John 2:1  We have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

We have a loving, merciful Father who remembers his children not for the day of their trouble, but the day of their salvation.  He remembers us not for our worst day but for our best day.

And Jesus and the Spirit within us are interceding for us.   And we can intercede for each other.  We can go before the Father asking God to be merciful just as this vinedresser interceded for this tree.  We can then, as the vinedresser did for the tree, show these people love and encourage them to produce more fruit.

Time is short.  Spend time in prayer before the Father on behalf of your friends and family.  And each day, seize the opportunity to produce fruit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But God granted understanding to Simon Peter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And suddenly, everything changes.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racism is removed through relationships.

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

Prejudice is overcome through experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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