Harmony #87: The Peace Jesus Brings (John 13:36-14:31; Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26)

Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!  

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have confident trust in God; have confident trust also in me.  My Father’s house has many rooms for eternal and secure rest;[1] if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3  

Note: Jesus tells Peter that Peter is about to exhibit massive failure in discipleship. Unthinkable betrayal of his rabbi. Jesus follows that up with words of hope and peace, not rebuke or scorn. He still loves Peter. Peter is still a child of God. God’s love, as expressed through Jesus, did not waver. Peter remained a loved child of God in the midst of his greatest failure.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.  You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”  

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?  

The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 

 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. [2] And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.[3] 

Note: most commentaries suggest that this discussion of “works” was a prediction about the spread of the Gospel – the introduction of Jesus and the establishment of the church - which was the work of the Father that Jesus started and we continue.

“If you love me, you will obey (keep and guard) my commandments. Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you throughout the age —  the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you.[4] 

I will not abandon you as orphans,[5] I will come to you. In a little while the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too. You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.  

The person who has my commandments and observes and watches over  them is the one who agapes me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.” 

 “Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot)[6] said, “what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will keep and watch over my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. #holyspirit 

The person who does not love me does not keep and watch over my words. And the word you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me. I have spoken these things while staying with you. But the Comforting Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you. 

“Peace (wholeness; harmony; well being) I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage…  

I will not speak with you much longer, for the archon[7] of this world is coming. He has no power over me, but I am doing just what the Father commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.“

* * * * * 

What kind of peace does the world give? I think this is a reference to the Pax Romana, the ‘peace by the sword’ for which the Romans were so famous.

·  Peace happened at the other end of power flexes, coercion, violence, war, and subjugation. Peace meant the powerful had gotten their way, usually at the expense of the powerless.

·  Peace was fickle and elusive. It was bloody to find and easy to lose. I suspect Jesus was reflecting on the Zealots’ wars when he wept over a city saying, “peace, peace” when there was none, and there would be none with the methods they were using.

·  That kind of peace is paranoid (think of Herod ordering the killing of the babies to try to get the “King of the Jews.”) There is always the risk that someone will break that peace – and they did. You start to keep an increasingly paranoid eye out for disruptors.

·  That kind of peace is contingent on so many factors. Natural disasters; war; political infighting; economic hardship…

The peace that Jesus offers is a reconciliation with a loving God from which nothing can separate us.

·  The battle for it is over, and none of us were trampled or subjugated. Satan, sin, death, hell and the grave were subjugated. God Himself battled on our behalf, offering Himself to save us.

·  This peace is confident, because God bought it and keeps it on our behalf. We don’t have to worry about it wavering or disappearing. “What can separate us from the love of God?” asked Paul. Nothing.

·  This peace is not at the mercy of outside elements taking it away. It is established by God, maintained by God, protected by God. His love never fails. His peace endures forever.

·  This peace is not contingent on anything around us, or any work we can do. It’s offered with grace, enacted “while we were yet sinners,” and offered to all.

I think we find it easy to search for contingent peace. If I were in a country where Christians are being killed, or where there is a physical war, I would focus on different things. The way it is, I will focus on common challenges in the United States. We are so used to seeing it happen in that way all around us.

·  Health – If I stay fit, I will be happy.

·  Beauty – If I can look young, or dress nicely, I will be content.

·  Productivity – If I can accomplish just a little more, I can relax.

·  Organization – If I can manage things just right, nothing will go wrong.

·  Knowledge – If I read and study enough, I will understand life.

·  Money – If I didn’t have to worry about the next bill, I would be okay.

·  Relationships – If I had the right people around me, I would never be unhappy. Or if I could just have the sex life I want, I would be at peace.

·  Reputation – If I can get other people to always view me well, then I’d be okay.

·  Value – Maybe if I’m indispensible, I will feel that elusive sense of worth.

If I seek my peace this way, I suspect I will fluctuate between two extremes: Fear (What is everyone thinking? What if I lose this? Who will I be if I don’t have this? Am I good enough?) or Worship (“Ah. This thing can save me…make me happy…bring me peace. I want more…. I can sacrifice more. I NEED THIS”).

And when that happens, we practice our own Pax Romana (peace by the sword).

·  Peace happens at the other end of our power flexes, our coercion, our trampling on others to get that think we so desperately think will bring us peace.

·  When we do feel peaceful, it will be fickle and elusive. It was so hard to get and so easy to lose. One wrong word; one bad day; just one thing….

·  We can get paranoid about all the things that will interfere with our costly and fickle peace, and suddenly everybody and everything is a source of worry, because they could undermine us yet again….

·      That kind of peace is contingent on so many factors, many of them out of our control.

The way the world would have us pursue peace asks us to believe that the world is the source of our peace and peace is ours for the taking if we are just smart enough, or rich enough, or strong enougn – and  that’s just not the way it works. “Not as the world gives,” said Jesus, if we are looking for peace.

When the angels came and announced that peace had arrived on earth, it was not because Herod was dethroned, or the Jewish people agreed on who the King of the Jews really was, or because schools were exempt from tragedy, or because there would be no more hurricanes, or political differences dissolved, or because cancer was gone. The circumstances didn’t look any different, but the implications for what was going to happen inside of people was significant.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you,” in the middle of the most tumultuous and violent events of his life. Judas was hatching a plot to betray him. The crowds were in an uproar. The chief priests, Sadducees, and Pharisees were disturbed, fearful, hatching their own plots to rid themselves of this menace to their power and position. Even the Romans could feel the atmosphere of tension in the city. Yet in the midst of all this, Jesus talks about peace. 

The Jewish people were expecting political, religious and financial peace – the common external markers. But that was their definition. It was contingent; hard to fight for (!); easy to lose. No wonder they were disillusioned and disappointed time and again.

 Skip ahead about 70 years after the birth of Christ. Paul was writing letters to the start-up churches helping them to better understand the true message of the gospel. When he wrote to the church in Ephesus, he was writing to a largely Gentile audience. They were having trouble forming a church community with the Jewish converts. Paul lets them know that God has broken down the divide between God’s “chosen” people and the “unchosen” Gentiles. Here we see a specific explanation of peace: 

 “Remember that at that time you (Gentiles) were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.   

For he himself is our peace…. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 

 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.  For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.“ (Ephesians 2:12-17)

Paul was jailed, beaten, shipwrecked, chased; people tried to kill him; he had his infamous ‘thorn in the flesh’ that God refused to take away so that Paul would understand God’s grace was sufficient. Yet Paul clearly believed he was one who had experienced the peace that Jesus brought.

What is this peace?  Reconciliation with God through Christ, empowered by His Spirit. Peace begins in us, not around us when we are in right relationship with Christ.  

 * * * * *

* “New Testament The Greek word eirene corresponds to the Hebrew shalom expressing the idea of peace, well-being, restoration, reconciliation with God, and salvation in the fullest sense. God is “the God of peace” ( Romans 15:33 ; Philippians 4:9 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:23 ;Hebrews 13:20 ). The Gospel is “the good news of peace” (Ephesians 6:15 ; Acts 10:36 ) because it announces the reconciliation of believers to God and to one another (Ephesians 2:12-18 ). God has made this peace a reality in Jesus Christ, who is “our peace.” We are justified through Him (Romans 5:1 ), reconciled through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20 ), and made one in Him (Ephesians 2:14 ). In Him we discover that ultimate peace which only God can give (John 14:27 ).

This peace is experienced as an inner spiritual peace by the individual believer (Philippians 4:7 ; Colossians 3:15 ; Romans 15:13 ). It is associated with receptiveness to God's salvation (Matthew 10:13 ), freedom from distress and fear (John 14:27 ; John 16:33 ), security (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 ), mercy (Galatians 6:16 ; 1 Timothy 1:2 ), joy (Romans 14:17 ; Romans 15:13 ), grace (Philippians 1:2 ; Revelation 1:4 ), love (2 Corinthians 13:11 ;Jude 1:2 ), life (Romans 8:6 ), and righteousness (Romans 14:17 ; Hebrews 12:11 ; James 3:18 ).

Such peace is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 ) that forms part of the “whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11,Ephesians 6:11,6:13 ), enabling the Christian to withstand the attacks of the forces of evil. Thus, the New Testament gives more attention to the understanding of spiritual peace as an inner experience of the individual believer than does the Old Testament. In both the Old and the New Testament, spiritual peace is realized in being rightly related—rightly related to God and rightly related to one another.” (From the Holman Bible Dictionary. “Peace, Spiritual.” www.studylight.org)

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[1] “Our Lord alludes here to the temple, which was called the house of God, in the precincts of which there were a great number of chambers, 1 Kings 6:5; Ezra 8:29; Jeremiah 35:2; Jeremiah 35:4; Jeremiah 36:10.” (Adam Clarke)

[2] “A measuring of miracles of this kind by their magnitude is throughout foreign to the N. T. Rather in μείζονα τούτων… its predominant signification is…world-subduing apostolic activity generally, produced by the Holy Spirit (John 16:18) in the diffusion of the gospel, with its light and life, amongst all peoples…”  (Meyer’s New Testament Commentary) “The explanation of these greater works is…in the whole work of the Church. The Day of Pentecost witnessed the first fulfilment of this prophecy; but it has been fulfilled also in every great moral and spiritual victory. Every revival of a truly religious spirit has been an instance of it; every mission-field has been a witness to it.” (Ellicott’s Commentary For English Readers) “These ‘greater works’ refer rather to the results of Pentecost… (Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges)

[3] “The name of a person can only be used when we seek to enforce his will and further his interests... Successful prayer must be for the furtherance of Christ’s kingdom.” (Expositor’s Greek Testament) “ ‘In My name’… means praying and working as Christ’s representatives in the same spirit in which Christ prayed and worked…”(Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges) “Praying in the name of Christ" means to pray as directed (authorized) by Him, bringing revelation that flows out of being in His presence. {It} is not a "religious formula" just to end prayers (or get what we want)!” (HELPS Word Studies) 

[4] “In Scripture, God’s Spirit sometimes filled his agents (e.g., Ex 31:3; 35:31; Dt 34:9; Mic 3:8), was often upon them (Nu 11:17,25 – 26; 24:2; Jdg 3:10; Eze 11:5), and was sometimes said to be in them (Nu 27:18; cf. Ge 41:38). In the promised time of restoration, however, God would pour his Spirit on all his people (Joel 2:28).” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[5] “Ancient writers sometimes used “orphan” to refer to those bereaved of others besides a father (in this case, their special teacher).” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[6] “The name "Ioudas"  in the New Testament refers to several individuals, most notably Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, and Judas (not Iscariot), another disciple. It is also used for Judah, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and for Jude, the brother of Jesus and author of the Epistle of Jude.” (Strong’s Lexicon)

[7] This word means, broadly speaking, a ruler or leader. A few commentaries apply this to Satan; the majority see it as a reference to either the head of the Sanhedrin sending his mercs to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, or to Roman authority.

Harmony #86: Serving & Loving (Luke 22:24-30; John 13:3-17, 34)

A dispute started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. So Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ Not so with you; instead the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the one who serves. 

  For who is greater, the one who is seated at the table, or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is seated at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. “You are the ones who have remained with me in my trials. Thus I grant to you a kingdom, just as my Father granted to me,[1] that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."[2] 

Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, he got up from the meal, removed his outer clothes, took a towel and tied it around himself.  He poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel he had wrapped around himself. 

Then he came to Simon Peter. Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You do not understand what I am doing now, but you will understand after these things.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!”
Jesus replied, “The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you  disciples are clean, but not every one of you.”[3](For Jesus knew the one who was going to betray him. For this reason he said, “Not every one of you is clean.”) 

 So when Jesus had washed their feet and put his outer clothing back on, he took his place at the table again and said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and do so correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another’s feet.  

For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you. I tell you the solemn truth, the slave is not greater than his master, nor is the one who is sent as a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you will be blessed if you do them… 

I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.”

This is Jesus’ last real conversation with his disciples. Judas has left to betray him; time is short. These chapters give us a condensed focus: “Remember this.”  So, let’s talk about love.

One of Jesus’ most famous teachings is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This was a brilliant distillation of all 600+ Old Testament laws. If you do the first properly, the second should follow naturally. If you don’t do the second, it’s a pretty good indication that you aren’t doing the first well either.[4] This summary of the law raises two immediate questions.

·  “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ response is the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan. Everybody is your neighbor, even those you most dislike for religious and cultural reasons.

·  What does it mean to love your neighbor “as yourself”?  Didn’t Jesus just say we have to die to ourselves? How does this work? And there may be an even more haunting question that comes with this: “What if I don’t love myself? Does this mean I can’t love other people?”

So let’s talk about what it means to love ourselves. We love ourselves when we consistently strive for our own self-interested fulfillment or goals. It is the conscious or unconscious motive of all of us. We are the primary focus in our lives. The fancy term for this is that we tend to be “ego-centric.” We are the one to whom we are most committed.  Now, this ‘love of self’ is not necessarily a bad thing.

·  God created us in Him image, and there is a value, worth and dignity to all of us. If we don't have some measure of appreciation or recognition of this, and we don't make choices for our own good that honor this reality, then we are not seeing ourselves biblically.

·  We see this in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 19, God gives a list of actions that his people will do: don’t lie, steal or cheat; take care of the poor; don’t show favoritism; pay good wages; don’t mock the deaf and blind; and take care of immigrants. Twice God summarizes: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (verses 18 and 34). In other words, you would want others to do this for you. Why? Because you think you are important, and that you matter, and that you deserve justice and mercy.

·  Christ's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" assumes that we clearly already love ourselves, and he doesn't say to stop. 

So, biblically speaking, emotional and spiritual health will include a proper understanding of our value, worth and dignity as image bearers of God; how we view ourselves is important, because how we understand our value will overlap with how we value others. The problem is the degree and the manner in which we love ourselves.

Paul warned in 2 Timothy 3:1-2 that "...in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves" (“preoccupied with their own selfish desires”[5]).  He was not giving new biblical insight into human psyche. He was warning about an inordinate love of self that sacrifices everyone else.

This raises a new dilemma. Perhaps our idea of what it means to love ourselves is terribly flawed. Perhaps out of all the people who love us, we are the worst - not because we hate ourselves but because we don’t actually know how to love ourselves well.

·  Have you ever pampered yourself when you should have been more disciplined, and as a result what felt good and rewarding in the moment bogged you down in the long run?

·  Have you ever followed your heart when you should have followed your head (or vice versa), and what you thought was a good thing blew up and hurt you?

·  Have you ever ignored good advice because it was hard and the boundaries would rob you of freedom – only to find out later that those boundaries were exactly what you needed to keep you from becoming enslaved to sinful habits?

·  Have you ever surrounded yourself with friends who only told you what you wanted to hear about how to live your life, and that echo chamber was so nice - until the shame and guilt of what they encouraged caught up with you?

And in all these cases, we were convinced that we knew the best way to love ourselves and our lives, but our understanding of what it meant to love was terribly flawed. Is it any wonder we have a hard time loving others well if the standard is “as you love yourself”?   

Lest you think Jesus messed something up here by giving a bad teaching, see the context. When Jesus condensed the Law into “Love God and love others as you love yourself,” he was honoring the Law as the Law : “This is how you can understand what God has revealed to you so far”. 

But Jesus was constantly making statements of contrast: “You have heard the Law say this…but I say.”  The Law was good but incomplete; Jesus showed the fulfillment. There was a greater, deeper way of understanding almost everything in the law – and that included love.  In his final teaching to his disciples, Jesus completes His revelation by giving them what he calls a “new law” of what it means to fully love well in the Kingdom of God.

John 13:33-35. “My children, My time here is brief. You will be searching for Me; and as I told the Jews, “You cannot go where I am going.” So I give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others…” 

John 15:12-13. “ My commandment to you is this: love others as I have loved you. There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends.” 

So the Law insisted that you can’t just love yourself; you have to love others. Jesus fulfills or completes this teaching by revealing that it is the way Jesus loved us, not the way we love ourselves, that is meant to guide us. So, what does that look like?

Christ-like love is sacrificial.

This is, I believe, the most profound aspect of the love of Jesus. After writing this gospel, John wrote several letters to the early church. We read in 1 John:

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him." (1 John 4:7-9 NIV)

In Jesus we see the ultimate (and unique) expression of the reality that the one who loves must die either physically or metaphorically.  Jesus did what no one else could in dying for our eternal salvation; if we want to live with others in genuine, loving relationship, we are going to have to lay down our lives for them in some fashion. No one truly loves if they refuse to sacrifice for the one they love. That’s hard enough, but it gets harder:

"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.  

Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full.  

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. " (Luke 6:27- 36)

Do we want to live as children of God? We must love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who persecute us, give of ourself without an expectation of a return, and be merciful and kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

When we love as God loves us, His name is glorified; His reputation is made great. Christians have never brought about positive and lasting cultural change through anger and despair. It’s always been through hope, grace and love.[6]

Christ-like love is not conditional.

No one has to be good enough to come to Jesus. While we were dead in our sins, Christ died so that we might live (Ephesians 2). He took tax collectors who were pawns of the Romans, soldiers who were part of the oppressors, prostitutes, Samaritans who were of Jewish heritage but worshipped idols, the religiously arrogant, the humble and sincere… he offered the Kingdom of Heaven to them all.

If we are to love others like Christ loves us, we must offer the kind of love that does not require someone to be good enough before we love them.  This is not a naïve love that overlooks the reality of people’s lives. We all have baggage, and wisdom requires that the love we offer is guided by boundaries for their sake and ours. This is also not a love that compromises on truth and holiness; love doesn’t enable sin.

When we offer unconditional love, we don’t merely commit to the good of other people only when they reach a condition we have set. We just offer it because it’s who we are as a reflection of whose we are. If you have ever been the recipient of this kind of love, you know how beautiful it is. There is a freedom in being able to say, “I think I might be hard to love,” and having someone say in return, “And yet, here you are, loved.”  There is peace; there is safety; there is hope.

We don’t have to earn God’s love. God loves people: not because he needs us; not because we complete him; not because we are worthy, or lovable, or pure, or spiritually impressive; not because we please God or represent Him well. As one pastor noted,

God does not love us because of who we are. Or because of what we do, or can do for God. Or because of what we say, or build, or accomplish, or change, or pray, or give, or profess, or believe… God simply loves us...[7]

·  When I pray regularly and when I don’t, God’s love does not fail.

·  When I was chained in sin and when I was freed…

·  When I ignore Him and when I am enamored with Him…

·  When I am depressed or happy, anxious or at peace, self-loathing of self-loving…

·  When I pastor well and when I do it terribly...

·  When I am loved by others and despised by others…

God has never waited to love people until they were good enough to be loved. He loves people because He is God, and He is good. And that gives me great hope indeed.

Christ-like love is tangible.

I like this quote from Teresa of Avila that captures a biblical principle of the role of Christians as “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12)

“Christ has no body on earth but yours. no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”

Words of love are important, but they are not sufficient. Love must be shown.  Jesus did not spend his time talking about how compassionate he was. Jesus embodied it.  Words are powerful and they matter, but it’s what we do in the ordinary moments of everyday life that matter the most. As James reminded us.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:14-17)

And as we love like Christ, we begin to see the answer to the prayer Jesus told us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There is hope that even on this side of heaven the reality of the Kingdom of God can impact the world. The more we appreciate and understand the love Jesus has for us, the more our ability to love is transformed, and the more we love other like Christ loved us. And in all this we will see how God has ordered His Kingdom for our good and His glory.

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[1] Christ’s entrance into his “glory,” and being seated upon his “throne,” seem to refer to the beginning of his reign on Pentecost (Luke 24:26; cf. Matthew 20:21; Mark 10:37; see also: Acts 2; Philippians 3:21; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:3; 2:7; 1 Peter 1:21).

[2] “The apostles will judge not with earthly judgment, but by the witness of their own lives. Since God's kingdom begins with the Resurrection of Christ, the authority of judgment has already been given to the apostles and their successors in the journey of the Church on earth (Mt 16:19; Jn 20:23).”  Orthodox Study Bible “J.W. McGarvey observed: The reference to the apostles sitting on “thrones” judging the tribes of “Israel” would be a reference to the authority of these men, as bequeathed by Christ, and implemented by their subsequent teaching in the church (the new Israel of God — Galatians 6:16) and as manifest in the sacred writings that remain authoritative today. As Coffman pointed out: “This was not a reference to literal thrones but to spiritual thrones of eminence and authority in Christ’s kingdom, from which they should exercise influence, not over fleshly Israel but over the spiritual Israel which is the church (Rom. 9:6; Gal. 3:29)” (pp. 298-299).”

https://christiancourier.com/articles/the-regeneration-a-study-of-matthew-19-28

[3] “Those who have completely bathed, that is, have been baptized, have no need ever to be baptized again, for baptism is indelible. The sins the believer assumes during his life must still be washed through ongoing repentance, just as the feet of a person returning from the public bath must be washed before entering the house. As Christians, we are bathed by Christ in baptism and have periodic washings in the sacrament of confession.” Orthodox Study Bible

[4] “If you say you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.” (1 John 4:20)

[5] http://biblehub.com/greek/5367.htm

[6] “Lessons for Today’s Church from the Life of the Early Church,” http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/lessons-for-todays-church-from-the-life-of-the-early-church/

[7] http://faithpresby.org/archives/sermons/written/files_4d2a59265361b.pdf

Harmony #85: The Passover Lamb (Luke 22:7-20; Mark 14:12-25; Matthew 26:17-29; John 13:1-2)

Then the first day for the feast of Unleavened Bread came, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us to eat…” So they left, went into the city, and found things just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

 Before the Passover feast, Jesus knew that his time had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now loved them to the very end.  Now when the hour came and it was evening, Jesus came to the house and took his place at the table and the twelve apostles joined him. 

 Jesus said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you the truth that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And in the same way he took the cup after they had eaten, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this cup is my blood, the blood of the new covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” And they all drank from it.

“Then the first day for the feast of Unleavened Bread came, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.” The biblical writers weren’t big on incidental details. If they include details, it’s meant to point the reader to something important. So, let’s talk about the first Passover.

After the descendants of Abraham went to Egypt in times of famine (instead of trusting in God), they hung around Egypt. Eventually, there were so many that Pharaoh said, “we must deal shrewdly with them,” so they didn’t join Egypt’s enemies. Instead of bribing them, Pharaoh enslaved them. They multiplied into the millions, and the Egyptians began to dread them.

Pharaoh eventually told the Hebrew midwives to kill the Hebrew baby boys (they didn’t). By the end of Exodus 1, Pharaoh has issued a command that all the Egyptians were to kill all the Hebrew boys. Moses was one of the boys who not only survived, but was adopted into Pharoah’s family.  

Fast forward. When adult Moses stopped an Egyptian from beating a Hebrew by killing the Egyptian, Moses fled from Egypt. Eventually, God called him back to deliver God’s people. Moses asked Pharaoh for a three days journey into the wilderness to worship God; Pharoah kept saying “no” over and over, so Yahweh began to show Pharaoh – and all the Egyptians and Hebrews watching – who was God and who wasn’t. This brings us to the plagues.

Keep in mind that the Hebrews had been in Egypt over 400 years. Depending on how you measure, that’s 10 to 30 generations. We are told in Exodus 12:38 that when Israel left Egypt that, “a mixed multitude went up with them.” Most historians will tell you this included Egyptians leaving with them as well as families comprised of Egyptians and Hebrews. It’s a long time to be in a very pagan Egypt, mingling and intermarrying with the Egyptians.[1]

Moses himself married the daughter of a priest from the Midianites, who worshipped a multitude of gods, including Baal and the “Queen of Heaven,” Ashteroth.[2]  Moses later married an Ethiopian woman, who certainly came from a polytheistic culture.[3]

This multitude was not only mixed ethnically, but also confused spiritually. By the time of Moses, the Egyptians and the Hebrews had the same problem – neither of them knew or served the one true God. Joshua will later tell God’s people (24:15), “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River (#Egypt), or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh.” But…

• God reveals a new name for the people to use (Exodus3:13-15; 6:3) when referencing God: Yahweh (“I Am”) instead of El Shaddai (God Almighty; A God Who Knows When To Say Enough)[4] This can read as read I AM, I WAS, and I WILL BE. The Jewish people saw something in this name that pointed to self-sufficiency; self-existence; trustworthiness; and presence (which meant relationship).

• ·God said He would make Himself known to the Israelites by delivering them from slavery (Exodus 6:7).

• Exodus 14:31: “And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of Yahweh displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared Yahweh and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” Notice how the Israelites needed to see God in action to get their attention.

• “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says, “Israel is my son, my firstborn. So I said to you, ‘Let my son go so that he may serve me.’”(Exodus 4:23)

 Meanwhile, Moses asking Pharaoh for a short journey to offer sacrifices to God was a bold move for at least two reasons.

First, it’s not clear that the Israelites understood who their God was by this time. Moses was using a new name for God; meanwhile El Shaddai, the Almighty, the One Who Knew When To Say Enough, was now saying “enough!” to their slavery. Why were they changing names? Did that mean they were changing gods? There had to be some confusion there.

Second, they were going to sacrifice a lamb/ram, and these were sacred to two Egyptian gods, Amun (chief god) and Khnum. They believed that rams were the earthly manifestation of a god and were worshipped in their physical form. The Egyptians sacrificed goats, not sheep. This was a problem. “Exod 8:22 The sacrifices that we offer to the LORD our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we offer in the sight of the Egyptians sacrifices that are an abomination to them, will they not stone us?”

We read how Pharoah’s heart hardened the longer the plagues go on. Even for the Egyptian reader, this would not have been a good sign.  According to Egyptian mythology, when nobility died, the gods presented their heart to Sobek, the crocodile god of the Nile. He had a scales on which to weigh their life. On one side was the “weight of goodness”; on the other side, Sobek placed the heart. If the heart was “light,” paradise awaited.  If the heart was “heavy,” off they went to the underworld with Sobek. The Hebrew word for “harden” is also the word for “heavy.”  Both Egyptian and Israelite readers would have seen that Pharaoh's heart became increasingly opposed to goodness as he denied the Israelite’s freedom.[5] 

Meanwhile, the plagues are methodically dismantling the status of the primary Egyptian gods.

• Water to Blood: Egyptian god of Nile, Hapi, Lord of the Fishes and Birds of the Marshes and Lord of the River

• Frogs: Egyptian goddess of fertility, Heket, who had the head of a frog. Her amulets were engraved with the phrase I am the resurrection. She was thought to give babies the breath of life.

• Lice or gnats from the dust: Geb, who ruled the dust of the earth.

• Flies (“dog fly”): god of creation, Khepri, who had the head of a fly.

• Death of livestock: Hathor, who had the head of a cow. 

• Boils and sores: Goddess of Medicine, Isis, called the Mother of Life and the Crone of Death.

• Hail: goddess of sky, Nut, the protector of children, goddess of childbirth.

• Locusts: Seth, god of the desert, storms, and foreigners.

• Darkness: Ra, the sun god. All forms of life were believed to have been created by Ra. Humans were created from Ra’s tears and sweat, hence the Egyptians call themselves the “Cattle of Ra.”

• Death of the Firstborn: Pharaoh, the King of Egypt was considered to be the greatest Egyptian god of all. His son would also have been considered a god. [6] All firstborns were considered sacred and protected by Ahmun-Ra.

The plagues were certainly not less than taking down Egyptian gods one by one so the Egyptians would see that Yahweh was God. But they were more. God is revealing himself to all the characters in this story, reminding all of them that their gods are small and fragile and the playthings of the Real God, so that all – Egyptian and Hebrew - would be convinced to give honor where honor is due.

The plagues apparently unfold over months and months as Pharoah keeps refusing to let God’s people go.  God is slow to anger; not eager to bring judgment, but offering opportunity over and over to turn from evil and do good, to stop oppressing and enslaving God’s family, to see for themselves that Yahweh is the Lord of lords, the God above all gods. 

Remember how Pharoah ordered all the people to make sure all of the Hebrew male children were killed? God does not order the same. In the final plague, He declares the death of the firstborn males if Pharoah does not relent in persecution against God’s firstborn son. When Moses tells Pharoah about this upcoming plague of death, Exodus says that “Moses, hot with anger, left Pharoah.” This is the first time he was “hot with anger” about a plague. Perhaps it’s because he told Pharaoh that the firstborn of even the slaves would die (Exodus 11:5).

But…there was a way out. This did not have to happen. We read of the plague of hail that "he who feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his livestock flee to the houses" (Exodus 9:20). All could avoid the penalties aimed at Pharaoh if they followed the lead of God’s people. This brings us to Exodus 12: The first Passover.

 Exodus 12 

 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt… “Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.  If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor,[7] having taken into account the number of people there are… 

The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.[8] Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.   Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire… 

On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. 

“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance… Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your hosts out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come… 

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe… When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down….’”

Why did God make his people do this? He already knew who his people were. He wasn’t confused. He could have just quietly spared them all. In fact, the prior six plagues had not touched the Hebrews at all, and they didn’t have to do anything. Why now? There is something about this means of getting God to “pass over” that needed to be specific, and very public.

First, I suspect it was so that everybody, including their Egyptian neighbors, would see and ask what they were doing. By this time, it was clear Yahweh had won the Battle of the Gods. All the Egyptians had months to see how plagues 4-9  were supernaturally not harming the Hebrews at all. 

In this mixed multitude, I have no doubt the Israelites told their friends what was going on.  After all, “The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.” (Exodus 11:3) We read in Exodus 12 that when they left, “Many other people went up with them, and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds.”

Second, God’s people are tested. Are they – not just Moses - willing to publicly challenge one of Egypt’s cherished gods? They would lead a sacred animal down the streets, keep it their home for three days, kill it on the fourth day (likely outdoors), roast the meat over a fire so that everybody could smell it, eat that sheep, then cover their doors with the animals’ blood. This is spiritual warfare at its most confrontational. Hundreds of thousands of households would kill a god, eat it, and smear that god’s blood on their front door.

If God didn’t come through, it wouldn’t be hard to track the families down who committed these acts. If Yahweh did not deliver them, they will be killed. Did they trust that God is who He claimed?

Meanwhile, something really important is happening in terms of where the blood was supposed to be placed. [9] Egyptians believed in five parts of the human being. If any of these parts ceased to exist, the person would cease to exist forever. 

• ·The physical body (why mummification was important.)

• ·The shadow (a very real part of a person’s being).

• ·The ka or “life force” (biblically, “the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7).

• The ba, or “character traits.”

• ·The name.

To the ancient Egyptian, the name was a very real part of a person. If you didn’t like somebody, you erased their name, because it erased them from the afterlife. When Moses (trained in Egypt)  wrote about the Exodus, he never mentions the name of Pharaoh, but deliberately gives the names of the two Hebrew midwives who were loyal to God (Exod. 1:15). They would live in the afterlife, and so their names mattered; Pharaoh, who had rejected God (Exod. 5:2), would not.

Wealthy Egyptians made sure their names lived on by chiseling their names into stone monuments. The lower class homes and slave huts were made of mud and straw, but… except for the stone lintels and doorposts. That’s where they would chisel their name. When God required the Israelites to paint the blood they collected from the Passover lamb on the doorposts and lintels, He was asking them to cover their names with the blood of the lamb. They could do nothing to ensure that they found life in the afterlife; only the blood of the Lamb could do that.[10]

* * * * *

The Old Testament Passover lamb, although a reality in that time, was a  foreshadowing of the better and final Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ.[11] Every Passover lamb ever was pointing toward Jesus dying on the cross so that His blood will cover the flawed and sinful names we’ve made for ourselves.

• John the Baptist recognized Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29)

• ·The required lamb without defect (Exodus 12:5) is Jesus;  a “lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19) who offers sure hope of eternal life (1 Peter 1:20-21).

• In Revelation, John sees Jesus as “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6) because it had been slain on a cross during the time that the Passover was observed (Mark 14:12).

• The first Passover marked release from Egyptian slavery; the death of Christ marks our release from the slavery of sin (Romans 8:2).

• ·The Bible says that destruction “passes over” those who have symbolically applied the sacrificial blood of Christ to their hearts (Hebrews 9:12, 14).
  

  The Passover meal is constructed around four cups.  The cups remind the participant of the four promises that God made in Exodus 6:6–7.

"I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians."

The four cups of the ancient Passover are as follows (other traditions developed over time):

Cup of Sanctification — “I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians…” The first cup marks Israel – and now us - as God’s chosen ones, sanctified, set apart to worship God as God intends. This requires freedom from that which enslaves us – in our case, sin.

Cup of Deliverance/Praise — “I will deliver you from  their bondage…” People who need rescue need help outside of themselves. Their deliverance -and ours – is all God’s doing. The “burdens” of the first phrase describe something uncomfortable and wearisome. The “bondage” of the second phrase (‘avôdāh) can mean both “work” and “worship.” Perhaps this Second Cup reminds us of our need for deliverance from our own false forms of worship.

Cup of Redemption — “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment…” Being redeemed reminds us that this deliverance was brought about by the payment of a price. God’s salvation requires both divine power and payment. It is not a cheap redemption. The Hebrew word here, gā’al, is used other places in Scripture for redeeming a family member, often from slavery. This wasn’t a legal transaction to free a slave; this was a Father redeeming His children. The price of the Passover Lamb’s death pointed the price of Jesus shedding His own blood for the redemption of his sinful, lost children. (Romans 5:8)

Cup of Protection /Hope— “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God…” the Fourth Cup envisions the time when all the spiritual children of Abraham will fully know God and be known as His people. Though God has begun a glorious work in us, the future holds our full and final redemption.[12]

________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Even Joseph, married an Egyptian woman (the daughter of a priest, no less).

[2] Exodus 18:9-11  “And Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh… Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.”

[3] Jewish tradition says that when Moses led an Egyptian army against Ethiopia the daughter of the king of Ethiopia fell in love with Moses. Moses agreed to marry her on the condition that she delivered the Ethiopians into his hand, which she did “A silent unheard voice in the Old Testament: The Cushite woman whom Moses married in Numbers 12:1-10.”  In Skriflig (Online). David T. Adamo Department of Old Testament and New Testament, University of South Africa.

[4] “The rabbis teach that one of the names for God, “El Shaddai,” is actually something quite interesting. Often translated “God Almighty,” the sages and rabbis noted that…Hebrew lacks vowels, so the arrangements of how someone breaks up the consonants (especially in proper nouns) can change the translation. In this teaching, the combination of consonants create a Hebrew phrase which says, “The God Who Knows When to Say Enough.” This is the God character we meet in these stories about origins, is it not? A God who knows when to stop creating (“sabbath” literally means cease). A God who knows how to stop a hand of vengeance. A God who knows when to stop destroying.” (Marty Solomon, “Knowing When to Say Enough (Week 2).”  bemaliturgy.com

[5] This is from the teaching of Ray VanderLaan.

[6] “Plagues Against The Gods Of Egypt.” Berean-to-berean.com

[7] I think there is good reason to believe the ‘mixed multitude” of Israelites had plenty of Egyptians as their nearest neighbor.

[8] Jewish tradition would focus on sheep. Perhaps goats were an option so the Egyptians were more inclined to participate? I don’t know. It would be in line with the heart of a God not eager to punish.

[9] HT to a post on this subject by Ken Arrington, on Quora. Many other sources confirm his point.

[10] “Covered with blood: A better understanding of Exodus 12:7.”  Ministrymagazine.org.

[11] 1 Corinthians 5:7

[12] I got these explanations from “Four Cups and their Meaning in the Passover Seder,” by Tim Hegg, at torahresource.com.

Harmony #84: Eternal Life (John 12:20-32)

When I was growing up, I got a lot of really good teaching about the life to come. I read books on Heaven; I read accounts of people who claimed to have visited. The hope of eternal life in Heaven was something to sustain and encourage us as we slogged through life, and rightfully so. The Bible’s image of the New Heaven and New Earth is glorious.

What I don’t remember hearing as much about was how God intended to have us participate in eternal life right now. We would sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through,” which suggested life was a frustrating annoyance until we got to the good stuff after we died.

It turns out we are not “just passing through.” Jesus invites us to enter into and experience the life of the Kingdom now in very tangible ways. Life isn’t just an inconvenient means to an end. Jesus invites us to flourish in God’s good creation, filled with His Spirit, invited to become part of the “body” of Christ for the nourishing of the world with the lived out good news that God is love, and His love is for you.

I wish I had heard that more. I wish we had talked more about what that looked like. So, here we go.

Here is today’s text with commentary added to provide the context and subtext. I encourage you to read this passage on your own in its uninterrupted form just to be clear on the distinction J

Now there were some God-fearing Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast of Passover. They came to Philip, who was from the Greek are of  Bethsaida in Galilee[1], with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to observe Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus about the request.

 Jesus granted permission, then spoke to them all. “This is what’s happening. Listen carefully: truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

 Anyone who delights in his life in this world more than in God will lose it, while anyone who thinks so little of his life, and so much of God, that he is willing to sacrifice it all for God, will keep it for eternal life.[2] Whoever serves me must follow me to where I am going; and where I am, my servant also will be.

 My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. This is the fulfillment of the Father’s plan. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified my name, and will glorify it again.” Some in the crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.[3]

Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine: to confirm you in this great truth, that I am the Son of God, he whom God the Father has sent into the world, by and in whom he designs to bring glory to His name.[4] 

 Now is the time for judgment and condemnation on the power of sin in this world[5]; now the prince of this world will be driven out and decisively defeated for all to see[6]. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will, like a fisherman dragging in his net, drag all the  people[7] of the world to me.”[8] (He said this to show that he would be lifted up by dying on a cross lifted up from the earth.)

* * * * *

Let’s pause for a Biblical Words Nerd Corner Moment.  This isn’t trivia; it’s clarity about the subject matter. The Bible has an interesting way of talking about things that last forever, or things that have ‘eternal life’ or are ‘everlasting’.

·  Animal sacrifices were to be offered “forever”- until the sacrifice of Jesus Christ ended the need for animal sacrifices (2 Chronicles 2:4; Hebrews 7:11-10:18).

·  God planned to dwell in Solomon’s temple “forever” - but it was destroyed (2 Chronicles 7:16).

·  The old covenant of the law is referred to as the "everlasting covenant" (Leviticus 24:8), yet 2 Corinthians 3 tells us it was transitory and has been replaced, and Hebrews 8:13 says, “In speaking of a new covenant, [Jesus] makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”

Were the biblical writers confused? I don’t think so. I believe they were inspired to choose even their individual words in a way that captured what God wanted to reveal. So if we assume this was not a mistake, there must be something going on with the language that is important.

In Hebrew, the word translated in 2 Chronicles as “forever” is olam. It's all over the Old Testament. It can mean an ancient time, a future time, a lifetime, a span of time with an uncertain end, an age of the world, a dynasty, an eternity… It’s a very flexible word.

When the Hebrew was translated into Greek in the Septuagint, the (still inspired) writers had to make a choice about how to translate olam. They chose the word aionios.[9] You will usually see this translated in English as ‘eternal,’ ‘everlasting,’ or forever just like olam is in the Old Testament. However, it’s more complex than that.

Its primary meaning is that the end is not known. While in the belly of the big fish, Jonah said the earth bound him forever (olam/aionios), but it was only three days. It was a time span with an unknown end. The end is there; you just can’t see it until its there -– like when you look out over Lake Michigan at the dunes and can’t see an end to the water. It’s a mystery. We might say it goes on forever. A bored child might say, “We’ve been here for ages. When are we going to leave?” Think of the disciples’ question in our passage today:

Matthew 24:3 “Tell us, when these things will be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age (aion)?”[10]

When is this age – this ‘forever’ age? this ‘eternal’ age? – going to end and the next one begin? Clearly the disciples meant something other than ‘eternal’ when used a word often translated as ‘eternal’. They aren’t the only ones.

Hebrews 1:1-2  “…in these last days [God] did speak to us in a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He did make the ages (aion).[11]

Hebrews 9:26 ”…But now He has appeared… at the consumation of the ages (aion),[12] for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”

Ephesians 3:8-9 To me…this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages (aionon) has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:19-20, 26 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross…the mystery which has been hidden from ages (aionon) and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.

So there have been ages in world history (not eternities in world history) –and we aren’t done yet.

Ephesians 1:20-21 “…when He raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age (aion) but also in that age which is to come.”

Ephesians 2:6-8 “…raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages (aion) he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

So, there have been a few ages; there will be more. The writers aren’t babbling incoherently about one endless eternity after another. They clearly mean something different. Meanwhile, both John and Paul show us what it looks like to talk about something being everlasting, covering all ages.

Revelation 1: 17-18  “I am the First and the Last, and I am the living One[13]. I entered the realm of the dead; but see, I am alive now and to the ages (aion) of the ages (aion) .”[14]

Revelation 22:5  “God’s servants will continually serve and worship Him… by His light, they will reign throughout the ages (aion) of the ages (aion).”[15]

Ephesians 3:21  “..to Him is the glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus, to all the generations of the age (aion) of the ages (aion).”

Clearly, John and Paul write of eternal life in the way we think of it, endless life in the ages of ages to come. But in today’s text, when Jesus said his disciples would get and keep eternal life, he was saying something about aionios life – life in this age, something we have now. How so?

It turns out that this word also describe a quality of life. It’s about who we are and what we do. HELPS Word Studies describes it like this:

An "age-characteristic"…the unique quality reality of God's life at work in the believer… Eternal (aiṓnios) life gives time its everlasting meaning for the believer through faith…thus believers live in "eternal (aiṓnios) life" right now, experiencing this quality of God's life now as a present possession.” (HELPS Word-studies)

When the rich ruler asked Jesus what he needed to do to have “eternal life,” and when Jesus talked to his disciples about eternal life, the phrase is aionios zoe[16], literally: “age life/life in the age,” the kind of life that comes from relationship with God beginning now and enduring throughout the age. They weren’t asking about where they were going to go when they died (though they had questions about that other places). Here, Jesus is talking about the life “more abundant” that Jesus offers us beginning now (John 10:10). A little later in the book of John, Jesus explained:

This is eternal life (zoe aionios): that they may know You, the only true God.”(John 17:3)

Earlier in the gospel, Jesus said:

“He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life (zoe aionios), and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)

Zoe aionios (“eternal life”) begins now with Christ in us, the hope of glory.[17] Back to the text we read this morning.

 “Anyone who serves Me must follow My path; anyone who serves Me will want to be where I am, and he will be honored by the Father…”

Those who are willing to sacrifice their life to follow Jesus will live in the aionios life God has given to them.

Bottom line: Though spiritual life or death, destruction or reward of the ages to come is always in our spiritual line of sight, we will live in and experience life or death, destruction or reward in this age as well. Jesus told his disciples to follow him now, embrace eternal life now, walk in the light now, in the midst of the darkness of this age.

Okay, we are out of the Biblical Words Nerd Corner.

How do we live in this life? As a response to the love God has shown us through Jesus, we are like the seed that falls to the ground: that which brings death and destruction – sin – must die if we are to rise into aionios life by following the person, teaching and the path of Jesus above all else. 

Dying sounds hard because it is. But we all have to let some things in out life die so that other things can live.

·   If I want to live healthy, I need to let my desire for fried chicken and mac and cheese die.

·   If I want to be a violin virtuoso, I will need to let my desire for 10,000 hours worth of other activities die.

·   If I want to really be known and loved, I need to let my desire to hide die.

 Maybe another way of saying it is that I am going to need to know which things need to be dead to me so that I might live.

If I am going to follow Jesus, my desire for things that compete for my allegiance and worship must die; my desire to be lord of my life must die; my sight must be fixed on that which brings and builds eternal life so that I can taste and see that the Lord and His Kingdom are good.

This dying to self is not simply the way for us to experience the fullness of zoe aionios, the life of heaven in this age.  It’s how we spread it to everyone around us.

Whenever we worship, somebody dies, and it will be either us or others.

If I worship my comfort, I will sacrifice my wife and kids. They will pay the cost of my comfort. “Stop bothering me. We will talk when I’m good and ready. No, you adjust your hopes and dreams and priorities because they don’t match mine.” I will sacrifice my friends. “I need you to show up on my terms.” I remain dead in my selfishness and sin, and I drag down those close to me.

If I worship my reputation, I will sacrifice any of you who don’t make me look good. “You think I’m wrong? You’re an idiot. You are winning an argument with me? I will lash out and try to humiliate you or keep beating this argument to death because I can’t be wrong.”  And I will remain dead in myself selfishness and sin and drag down those around me.

If I worship money, I will choose work time over relationship time and I will choose profit over people.  If I worship my health, I will make everyone else take second place to my diet and workout schedule. If I worship sex, all that will matter is my fulfillment and my happiness, and I will sacrifice the dignity and autonomy of people around me as I manipulate and pressure and use… And I will remain dead in my selfishness and sin and drag down those around me.

You want to know what you worship? Ask yourself whom you are willing to sacrifice; then ask yourself why.

So what do we do if we are caught in this trap? We must become that seed that falls to the ground and dies so it can be brought back to life and bear good fruit. Or, as Paul wrote, we present our bodies as living sacrifices, wholly acceptable unto God (Romans 12:1). Watch for a very important two words to show up J

In the same way you gave your bodily members away as servants to corrupt and lawless living and found yourselves deeper in your unruly lives, now devote your members as servants to right and reconciled lives so you will find yourselves deeper in holy living.  In the days when you lived as slaves to sin, you had no obligation to do the right thing. In that regard, you were free.But what do you have to show from your former lives besides shame? The outcome of that life is death, guaranteed.

But now that you have been emancipated from the death grip of sin and are God’s slave, you have a different sort of life, a growing holiness. The outcome of that life is eternal life (zoe aionios). The payoff for a life of sin is death, but God is offering us a free gift—eternal life through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King. (Romans 6: 19-23)

It begins with a commitment to Jesus. We acknowledge the reality of who Jesus is; we surrender the lordship of our life to Him; we commit to following his path rather than ours. Holy living leads to growing holiness, which leads to experiencing the gift of zoe aionios God has given us.

I remember thinking as a young man that I wanted to make a difference in the Kingdom of God. I really wanted my life to count. I saw some older folks who were godly and whose presence had really impacted my life. I knew it was because of Jesus at work in them, and I wanted that!

I took me years to realize I couldn't just want that. We rest in Christ, but we don’t lounge in zoe aionios; we are invited to participate. A call to follow Jesus will require putting one foot in front of the other in the same direction as Jesus if we want to go with Jesus where Jesus is going.

·  If I wanted the wisdom of aionios life, I had to prioritize certain things in my life that would lead to wisdom, like listening to and reading wise voices instead of entertaining but dumb ones.

·  If I wanted the self-control of aionios life, I had to demonstrate the fruit of self-control that the Holy Spirit was growing on my branches.

·  If I wanted the patience of aionios life instead of the anger that filled me, I had to follow Jesus deeper into understanding myself and maybe to a good counselor who helps me discover God’s healing.

·  If I wanted to move from lustful thoughts to the pure thoughts of aionios life, I had to change what was filling my mind and bring in some righteous material the helped me view people as God sees them.

·  If I wanted my marriage to embody spousal relationships in aionios life, I needed to increasingly learn and do biblical habits of loving and honoring and partnering with my wife.

There was no amount of wishful thinking that was going to change me in those areas.  There was, however, the power of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit as the absolute foundation. Then, participation in aionios life: praying, studying the Bible, seeking counsel both casual and professional that steadied me in the path of righteousness, becoming accountable to others…and putting into practice what I learned.  Holy living, leading to holy maturity, leading me deeper into eternal life.

That is still my challenge and my goal. Every day I need to drop seeds of sin to the ground to die so that I might produce life and not death. Every day, even in small ways, I must willing reject that which brings aionios death and embrace that which brings aionios life.

It is in this path that we begin to truly see how the Kingdom of God, right here and now, is meant for our good and God’s glory. N.T. Wright gets the final word.

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven…The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless…God has a great future in store for it.

What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future.

These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly…They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.

Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...

The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.” 
― N. T. Wright

 _________________________________________________________________________

[1] “Philip’s name is Greek; he came from the region governed by Herod Philip… with connections to the Decapolis, which consisted of ten cities that were Greek in character.” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[2] Loves his life means “delights in his life in this world more than in God.” Hates his life in this world means “thinks so little of his life, and so much of God, that he is willing to sacrifice it all for God.” (ESV Global Study Bible)

[3] Think of a similar scenario at Paul’s conversion (Acts 9:7; 22:9).

[4] Matthew Poole Commentary

[5]  “By His coming death, Jesus will end the power of sin over Adam’s race, judging and condemning it.” (ESV Reformation Study bible)

[6] “At the cross, the devil will be cast out, that is, decisively defeated (see Luke 10:18; Heb. 2:14–15; Rev. 20:10).” (ESV Global Study Bible)

[7] HELPS Word-studies  3956 pás – each, every; each "part(s) of a totality…each (every) part that applies." The emphasis is on "one piece at a time."  

[8] “There is an allusion here to the ensigns or colors of commanders of regiments, elevated on high places, that the people might flock to his standard.” (Adam Clarke)

[9] There could have chosen a Greek word that only means eternal or everlasting in a way that matches what we think of when we use the English words. That word is aidos. However, it’s only used twice in Scripture, and never in the phrase we translate as “eternal life.”

[10] Some translations say “end of the world.” That makes it sound like the end of time, but aionios points toward a time with an end, not the end of all time.

[11] Some translations say universe, world or worlds. That just…not what it means.

[12] The CEV says “at the end of time”; Webster’s says “world.” That’s not what it means.

[13] Daniel 4:34

[14] This is often translated “forever and ever” captures the intent of “ages” plural. The Aramaic Bible says “eternity of eternities,” which nails the intent,

[15] That’s how a Greek writer described forever and ever. They doubled down.

[16] “All life (2222 /zōḗ), throughout the universe, is derived – i.e. it always (only) comes from and is sustained by God's self-existent life. The Lord intimately shares His gift of life with people, creating each in His image which gives all the capacity to know His eternal life.” (HELPS Word Studies)

[17] “Eternal life is having the kind of life that God has… It isn’t just lasting forever. It’s a quality of life that we come to have by participating in the Kingdom of God.” (Dallas Williard)

Harmony #83: The Word That Endures (Matthew 23-24; Mark 12; Luke 20-21)

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen a theme.

Jesus cleanses the temple and withers the fig tree (a symbol of Jewish religious leaders) to prophecy the end of the Sadducees as the priestly line, as well as the end of the Jerusalem Temple as ground zero of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom’s mantle will be passed to the church, where all are priests[1] and, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman, you won’t have to ask what mountain to go to in order to worship in the right temple. God’s people will worship in Spirit and in Truth[2] in the new temple: us as individuals[3], and us in community[4].

The Sadducees challenge him. Jesus responds to these three challenges by highlighting why they “withered at the root”:

• compromising relationship with Rome

• lack of knowledge concerning the Scripture

• misunderstanding of the power of God

• · lack of love

Jesus isn’t done. Now it’s time to teach.

 (Matthew 23:1-3, 5-12; Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:45-47)

As all the people were listening to his teaching, Jesus said to his disciples, “Beware of the experts in the law and the Pharisees who [read the Torah] on Moses’ seat. Pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

They devour widows’ property and will receive a more severe punishment. They do all their deeds to be seen by people, for they like walking around in long robes, with their phylacteries wide and their tassels long, and as a show make long prayers. They love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and elaborate greetings in the marketplaces.

They love to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’ But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers. And call no one your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one teacher, the Christ.

The greatest among you will be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

I highlighted Jesus’ conclusion because I’m not sure this is as much about using titles as it is about the danger of pride, of wanting those titles to be exalted. This is a contrast of attitudes, not roles. So, let’s update the list.

• compromising relationship with Rome

• lack of knowledge concerning the Scripture

• misunderstanding of the power of God

• lack of love

• lack of service and humility

Then, in good rabbinic fashion, Jesus points to something happening around them to contrast the Sadducees with an unexpected hero.

 (Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4)

Then Jesus sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing their gifts of large amounts into the offering box. He also saw a poor widow come and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny.

He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others. For they all offered their gifts out of their wealth. But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.”

True worship will be costly. If we really worship, we will feel it. As David once said, “I will not give God sacrifices that cost me nothing.”[5] Jesus point out a contrast between the widow and the religious leaders living in luxury and making a show of their generosity, which turned out not to be that generous after all. It was nothing to them.

Jesus was going to need spiritual leaders in his new church who knew what it meant to be “broken and spilled out” for those around them. This will come true in the lives of the disciples and the apostles like Paul. Almost all of them will pay with their lives.

There is a place in Paul’s letter to Corinth where we see some exasperation. He is writing about false teachers making a show about how impressive they are: “super apostles” who are great speakers, who elevate themselves, and who evidently get rich off of the people they are supposed to be serving. He says they are “masquerading as servants of righteousness.” Then he basically says, “Listen, if we are looking for pumped up resumes, check this out.” At one point he cites what he has gone through.

“I have been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.  Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move.

I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” (2 Corinthians 11:23-30)

You would never have heard a Sadducee boast in that. Their boast was in the luxury and comfort that followed their compromise with the Romans. Clearly they were blessed by God because they prospered financially, physically and socially, right? They looked impressive – on Roman terms. Jesus flipped that table when he flipped their physical tables in the Temple. What was the most impressive resume of the follower of Jesus? Worship and love of God expressed in love of neighbor, which was going to look like humble service, often at great cost. Jesus once taught,

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

Notice what people become when this happens.

 “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world… let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (13-16)

What is the light and salt? Good deeds of humble service motivated and empowered by God’s love. Back to today’s text.

(Matthew 24:1-2; Luke 21:5)

Jesus left the temple. As He was walking away, His disciples came up to Him and asked what He thought about the temple buildings. Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. He replied,” Look around you. All of it will become rubble. I tell you this: not one stone will be left standing.”

I think the disciples he was telling them that the Temple was going to be destroyed. It must have been hard for them to wrap their minds around the idea that it would be gone. It had been home base all their lives. Everything centered around the Temple and the Torah. “Are you sure? Look how impressive this is.”

I wonder if we wouldn’t have done the same. The Temple was a massive feat of architecture.[6]The stones were huge. Estimates are that it would take 7 modern cranes to move some of the rocks. No one is quite sure how they moved them – and fit them together as well as modern brick and mortar. It had lots of marble covered with gold. Josephus wrote that it was so opulent that it looked like a snow-capped mountain. “Are you sure, Jesus?”

Matthew 24:3-35; Mark 13:3-31; Luke 21

Later, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. “We don’t understand Your predictions. Tell us, when will these things happen: When will the temple be destroyed? What will be the sign that You are returning in judgment?[7] How will we know that the end of this age is upon us?”

Jesus: “Take care that you are not deceived. For many will come in My name claiming they are the Anointed One, and many poor souls will be taken in. You will hear of wars, and you will hear rumors of wars, but you should not panic. It is inevitable, this violent breaking apart of the sinful world, but remember, the wars are not the end. The end is still unfolding.

Nations will do battle with nations, and kingdoms will fight neighboring kingdoms, and there will be famines and earthquakes. But these are not the end. These are the birth pangs, the beginning. The end is still unfolding.

They will hand you over to your enemies, who will torture you and then kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me. And many who have followed Me and claimed to love Me and sought God’s kingdom will turn away—they will abandon the faith and betray and hate one another. 

The love that they had for one another will grow cold because few will obey the law. False prophets will appear, many will be taken in by them, and the only thing that will grow is wickedness. There will be no end to the increase of wickedness.

 But those who do not waver from our path and do not follow those false prophets—those among you will be saved. And this good news of God’s kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, a testimony to all people and all nations. Then, beloved, the end/the consummation of the age will come.

When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. You will remember that the prophet Daniel predicted this—predicted the abomination that causes desolation[8]—when you see the prophesied desolation of the holy place. (Reader, take notice; it is important that you understand this.) When you see this, let those in Judea flee to the mountains.[9]

 If you are relaxing on your rooftop one evening and the signs of the temple’s destructions come, don’t return to your house to rescue a book or a pet or a scrap of clothing. If you are in the field when the great destruction begins, don’t return home for a cloak. Pregnant women and nursing mothers will have the worst of it. And as for you, pray that your flight to the hills will not come on the Sabbath or in the cold of winter.

They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. For the tribulation will be unparalleled—hardships of a magnitude that has not been seen since creation and that will not be seen again.

 Indeed the Lord God your merciful judge will cut this time of trial short, and this will be done for the benefit of the elect that some might indeed be saved—for no one could survive the depravity for very long.[10]

 I cannot say this clearly enough: during this time, someone will say to you, “Look, here is the Anointed One!” or “Aren’t you relieved? Haven’t you seen the Savior down there, around the bend, over the hill and dale?” Do not believe them. 

False liberators and false prophets will appear, and they will know a few tricks—they will perform great miracles, and they will make great promises. If it were possible, they would even deceive God’s elect. But I am warning you ahead of time: remember—do not fall for their lies or lines or promises.

 If someone says, “He’s out there in the desert”—do not go. And if someone says, “He’s here at our house, at our table”—do not believe him. When the Son of Man comes, He will be as visible as lightning in the East is visible even in the West. And where the carcass is, there will always be vultures.[11]

And as the prophets have foretold it: after the distress of those days, “The sun will grow dark, and the moon will be hidden. The stars will fall from the sky, and all the powers in the heavens will be dislodged and shaken from their places.”[12]

That is when the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. All the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming; they will see Him powerful and glorious, riding on chariots of clouds in the sky.[13] With a loud trumpet call, He will send out battalions of heavenly messengers; and they will gather His beloved faithful elect from the four corners of creation, from one end of heaven to the other.[14]

Now think of the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and greenish, as soon as it begins to sprout leaves, you know to expect summer. In the same way, when you see the wars and the suffering and the false liberators and the desolations, you will know the Son of Man is near—right at the door.

I tell you this: this generation will see all these things take place before it passes away. My words are always true and always here with you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.[15]

 Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 

Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

* * * * *

Bible scholars generally take one of two views on this text: 

1.) Half of the chapter tells of the destruction of Jerusalem (v.1-35); the other half tells about the final judgment (v.36-51).

2.) The entire chapter deals with the destruction of Jerusalem.

If you click through different translations in Biblegateway.com, you will often see a heading at the beginning of Matthew 24. It will either say “The Destruction of Jerusalem” or “The Destruction of Jerusalem and Signs of the End Times,” or something like that.

There is no doubt that the destruction of the Temple is in view. Both views agree on this point. A.D. 66-70 were a terrible four years. The Zealots defended Jerusalem…zealously. The Romans, equally determined, starved its inhabitants into cannibalism at one point. In AD 70, they destroyed the temple and the city. More than a million Jews died, and more than 97,000 were taken captive. The Romans erected Titus’ Arch in Rome to celebrate the victory.[16]

The document I’ve been using for this Harmony Of the Gospel’s approach has this title: “The Destruction of Jerusalem.” I hold this in an open hand, but here’s a few quick reasons I prefer this view.

In the introductory remarks, Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem (1-3).

• The gospel was supposed to be “preached in all the world” before “the end” (of Jerusalem), which we see fulfilled in Colossians 1:6,23.

• Jesus said that the sign of the end was ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ in the ‘holy place.’ This is very likely the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, who first filled it with banners containing images of Caesar.

• When that happens, His disciples would know that the fall of Jerusalem was near (32-33), and the people in Judea will flee.

• The things of which He spoke were to come upon “this generation,”  “Generation” is used in Matthew 1:17, 11:16, 12:39, 41, 42, 45, 16:4, 17:17, 23:36, and 24:34. Every other place refers to the generation standing right in front of Jesus. He says to his disciples, “Pray that you may escape.”

• The concern about fleeing “on the Sabbath” is a very Jewish concern as opposed to a Gentile one, so this wouldn’t apply to all the world.

• As a result of Jerusalem’s destruction, those who leave are saved; those who stay die. When the Bible talks about what happens at the end of all things, the opposite is true. Those who stay inherit the New Heaven and New Earth, and those who are taken do not.

• People can flee from this judgment and hide; not so if it's the Final Judgment.

* * * * * 

Two points. The first one is a challenge, the second an encouragement.

I suspect the judgment that fell upon Jerusalem and the Temple was a form of “sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8) What was going on with the leaders? 

• compromising relationship with Rome

• lack of knowledge concerning the Scripture

• misunderstanding of the power of God

• lack of love

• lack of service and humility

First, Israel’s history had shown that whenever God’s people relied on empires like Egypt and Assyria for provision and safety instead of God, the empires always turned on them.

Second, the Sadducees knew better. They should have taken their sacred texts seriously, because they contain that warning.

Third and fourth, what happens when you get to cozy with the Empire? You start to look like the empire, and at that point you stop being salt and light because there are no good deeds that bring glory to God. This list of the sins of the Sadducees could be equally applied to the leaders of Rome. Now, they were just parties competing or power.

And when the Jewish leaders could not control their own people (the Zealots), they found out very quickly that Rome had only tolerated them while they were useful on Rome’s terms.

There is a warning here for the church. The characteristics of the Sadducees (and the Zealots) cannot characterize us. When a coercive, bullying or violent attempt to spread the Kingdom of God combines with a corrupt desire to share the power and luxury of the Empire at the expense of righteous obedience and true worship, we will become full of mold, and wither at the root. It will corrupt us from the inside out, and it will invite a whirlwind of destruction.

Second, I love how Jesus ends with hope. If I were a disciple, I might not have slept well that night considering all the things that were about to land on Jerusalem. But Jesus reminded them of what lasts, what is eternal.

“My words are always true and always here with you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” 

 “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.”(John 6:33)

The disciples need to hear this. The words of The Word will endure. The Sprit and the Life God gives will endure.

Truth will endure.

Hope will endure.

The love of many may wax cold, but yours doesn’t have to.

Many will believe lies, but you don’t have to.

Many will give themselves to wickedness, but you don’t have to.

Many will leave the faith and betray each other, but you don’t have to.

Steady.

Don’t panic.

Through you, the good news of God’s kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all people and all nations.

 ____________________________________________________________________

[1] 1 Peter 2

[2] John 4

[3] 1 Corinthians 6

[4] Ephesians 2

[5] 2 Samuel 24

[6] NET Bible footnotes

[7] “Parousia, commonly denoting presence. Readers with a Jewish background would have taken these words to describe a coming in judgment.” (Gordon Ferguson)

[8] “The abomination of desolation is an allusion to Daniel 9:27. Though some have seen the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy in the actions of Antiochus IV in 167 b.c., Jesus seems to indicate that Antiochus was not the final fulfillment…Some argue that this was realized in a.d. 70, while others claim that it will not be fully realized until the great tribulation at the end of the age (Mark 13:14, 19, 24; Rev 3:10).” (NET Bible footnotes)

[9] Fleeing to the mountains is a key OT image: Gen 19:17; Judg 6:2; Isa 15:5; Jer 16:16; Zech 14:5. (NET Bible footnotes)

[10] “In a siege against the city lasting nearly a year, Cestius Gallius, the Roman general, withdrew to Caesarea and brought back a larger army. This break in the battle allowed the Christians who understood Jesus’ prophecy to flee the city. Josephus says that many did, leaving behind the Jews in the city who were determined to fight to the death (which they did).” (Gordon Ferguson, “Matthew 24: End of the World or End of the Age?”)

[11] In other words, when the judgment comes, the location will be obvious.

[12] “An allusion to Isaiah 13:10; 34:4 and Joel 2:10. The heavens were seen as the abode of heavenly forces, so their shaking indicates distress in the spiritual realm. Although some take the powers as a reference to bodies in the heavens, this is not as likely.” (NET Bible footnotes) See also Ezekiel 32.

[13] “See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt tremble before him, and the hearts of the Egyptians melt within them.” (Isaiah 19:1)

[14] “The reference to the Son of Man coming in the clouds is a figurative reference to Divine judgment upon the nations (Isa.19:1-4; Isaiah 34). And the reference to the angels gathering the elect is symbolic of God’s protection of His people (cp. Rev.7:1-3).” (Lanny Smith)

[15] See Isaiah 40:8. Also, “My words shall not pass away; be vain and empty, and unaccomplished; which is true of anything, and everything spoken by Christ; and especially here regards all that he had said concerning the calamities that should befall the Jews, before, at, or upon the destruction of their nation, city, and temple; and the design of the expression, is to show the certainty, unalterableness, and sure accomplishment of these things.” (Gill’s Exposition)

[16] https://hope4israel.org/jerusalem-70-ad-not-one-stone-left-upon-another/

Harmony #82: “First the Word, then the words.” (Matthew 22:15-40: Mark 12:13-34; Luke 20:20-40)

After Jesus routed the money changers from the Temple, Matthew records three attempts by religious leaders to trap Jesus: a question about temple taxes, a question about the afterlife, and a question about the Law. I am going to lump them together for two key reasons: think Jesus’ answer to the third one gives them the foundational answer to every tension they propose, and Jesus shows us how to pursue wisdom as a community.[1]

In Jesus’ time, there was great debate among the Jewish people: “Do I buy Caesar’s tribute coin and pay tribute to Caesar?” It was a form of taxation, and Judaism had opinions about paying taxes.

“He is king whose coin passes current.”[2]

"A publican, or tax gatherer, that is appointed by the king, whether a king of Israel, or of the Gentiles…it is forbidden to refuse payment of the tax to him, for, ‘the right of a king is right’.''[3]

So I don’t think this was a generic question about taxes in general. That issue had been resolved. But…

• These tribute coins had language about the divinity of Caesar. Marty Solomon has a coin with the inscription “Caesar, son of divine, most high God.” That kind of language was very common.

• There was often an image of a god or goddess on the back.

• The money raised went to the Temple of Jupiter, the center of ancient Roman religion.

• The coin was a receipt that proved you paid tribute to Caesar and to Rome. When you got this coin, you burned incense to worship Caesar. Now it’s not just a tax. It might be idolatry.

So, what should they do?

The Herodians are going to pay. “It’s just part of the Roman world we live in and enjoy. It’s fine. We are supposed to pay taxes. Grab the coin, go through the motions. As much as is possible, live at peace with all people.”[4]

The Sadducees are probably selling the coins at an upcharge and keeping the money. They’re going to say, “Don’t you know what Rome gives us? We’ve worked pretty hard to get this whole political alignment figured out. Keep your head down. Get the coin.”

The Essenes? They’re going to be in the desert. This coin means nothing to them. If they lived in Jerusalem, they would do the opposite of the Sadducees.

The Zealots will buy it, then stab the person who sold it to them, because anybody who offers this kind of idolatrous temple tribute deserves to die.

The Pharisees are going to have an internal squabble because the schools of Hillel and Shammai will not agree about what to do.

• Shammai Pharisees built on the foundational commandments of “Love God and keep the Sabbath.” They were all about obedience and the letter of the Law. They would’ve said, “This is idolatry. Obedience demands we not purchase the coin.”

• Hillel Pharisees built on, “Love God and love your neighbor.” God said of Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most brutal tyrants in human history: “The whole earth is mine and I give it to Nebuchadnezzar.” (Jeremiah 27:6) Hillel said that the ruling authorities, even Rome, were put in place by God. Buying the tribute coin was not idolatry; it was giving back to the ruler what God has decided in His sovereign will to give him in the first place.

Then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians out and planned together to entrap Jesus with his own words. They watched him carefully and sent spies who pretended to be sincere. They wanted to take advantage of what he might say so that they could deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.

When they came they said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are truthful and speak and teach correctly. You do not court anyone’s favor because you show no partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right for us to pay tribute taxes to Caesar or not?”

Let’s take the problem up a notch. It was also a politically explosive issue. In Acts 5, we read of Judas of Galilee, who resorted to violence in his opposition to the tax. There was the potential for violence depending on what Jesus’ listeners did with his answer.

If Jesus affirmed the lawfulness of the tax, he would lose any future merit with the Hillel Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots. He would alienate those who already ground their teeth with the need to pay taxes to a foreign occupying army, let alone this blasphemous temple tax.

If he said it was unlawful, the Sadducees and Herodians would present him as an enemy of Rome and hand him over to the Romans for the treason inciting others to dishonor Caesar – which is what they do in Luke 23 when they falsely accuse him of this very thing.[5]Remember, it’s Passover, and Roman soldiers are everywhere to keep an eye on any fermenting violence.

Today we might say he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

But Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and perceived their deceit and evil intentions and said to them “Hypocrites! Why are you testing me?  Show me the denarius (tribute coin) used for the tax.” So they brought him a denarius.

By calling them hypocrites, Jesus is saying they were acting; they weren’t serious. They were playing a role that was just for show – in this case, they were playing the role of pious followers of God concerned about righteousness and pursuing truth. He proves their hypocrisy in a clever way.

Jews were very sensitive about images of emperors. They would not even allow flags or standards bearing imperial images to be carried in Jerusalem. There were cases where they would block the roads so that Rome could not bring images of the emperor into their spaces. It was a big deal.

But…when Jesus asks for the coin, the Herodians and Pharisees start reaching into their robe pockets: “You mean like this one?” Marty Solomon notes, “I picture Jesus like reaching out winking at them. ‘We know where you stand now. Thank you.’”

 He said to them, “Whose image[6] and inscription are on it?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” Then Jesus said to them, “Then give back/return to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Now when they heard this they were utterly amazed at him, and were unable in the presence of the people to trap him with his own words. Stunned by his answer, they fell silent, and left him and went away.

In those days, putting your image on a thing meant claiming ownership of the thing. Jesus is making a contrast: Caesar’s image is on the tribute coin, so he can lay claim to his money; give it back to him. God’s image is on humanity, so he lays claim to the lives of people; give your life back to him. Give back Caesar’s coin, but don’t give him your life or your worship.

Jesus does not resolve this question. They are going to continue to wrestle with those issues. Meanwhile, they are also going to have to do some introspection to determine whose image and whose inscription was most prominently displayed on them.

To whom did they pledge their allegiance? Who had their heart, soul, mind and strength? I was trying to think of something similar today, and it’s not easy to make a clean correlation here in the U.S. What if the government would say, “Have your churches, no problem, but…we’re gonna need everyone to go to the courthouse every year and go on record saying the Pledge of Allegiance.” I think you would see a similar kind of tension, with similar arguments. I suspect Jesus would give the same answer. We’ll talk about why in a moment.

Were they sure that they had not traded in their hope and trust for God and made the things of the Empire a source of their hope and worship? God’s people had a history of turning to Empires for provision when God had promised to take care of them: Egypt, Assyria, now Rome. Did their interaction with Rome reveal an attempt to be neighborly and live at peace with all people, or did it reflect something troubling: giving up on God’s plan and turning to Rome’s? Once again, who had their heart?

Let’s briefly look at the other two tests, then tie them together.

The same day Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to him and asked him, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, his brother must marry the widow and father children for his brother.’

Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children he left his wife to his brother. The second married her and died without any children. Then the third married her, and in this same way all seven died, leaving no children. Last of all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Aren’t you deceived for this reason, because you don’t know the scriptures or the power of God? The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.

 But those who are regarded as worthy to share in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. In fact, they can no longer die, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.Now as for the resurrection of the dead, even Moses revealed that the dead are raised in the passage about the bush,where God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Now he is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live before him. You are badly mistaken!”

Jesus calls them out: they don’t understand the power of God and they don’t understand the Scriptures. Ouch. As for their hypothetical, the closest he gets to answering is saying the age to come will be so different in terms or our redeemed nature that this question will seem silly. But his response will likely bring out a response in them similar to how he answered the first question. Back to the text.

Now one of the experts in religious law came and heard them debating. When he saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him a question to test him, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest, the most important of all?”

Jesus answered him, “The most important is: ‘Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and prophets depend on these two commandments. There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The expert in the law said to him, “That is true, Teacher; you are right to say that he is one, and there is no one else besides him. And to love him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered thoughtfully, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”[7]

* * * * *

A common thread in all of Jesus’ replies is that he pushes them into the text. That was the Jewish way; that was the manner of rabbinical teaching. The teacher did not necessarily answer their question (though Jesus did in the third instance, while still pushing him back to the text). A good Jewish teacher pushed his students to study, to wrestle, to dig out the treasure from God’s Word, to own their answers for themselves, and to do so in community. First the Word, then the words. First we study the text, then we talk with each other.

With the temple tax, he leaves them with question: what is Caesar’s and what is God’s? What does it mean to return it? Does obedience to God require not using Caesar’s money, or does hospitality and love of neighbor include playing nice with Roman customs to some degree? James would seen teach the importance of keeping yourself unspotted from the world.[8] Paul would soon write that as much as possible, they should live at peace with all people and respect authorities.[9]

Jesus seems content to leave them with debate, as if the process of navigating differences was an important part of doing life together. It was going to press his audience back into the Torah, back into all the Old Testament writings. It was going to push them into the text yet again. Then, they would get together and talk it out. First the Word, then the words.

With the marriage question, he just points out that they don’t understand what life will be like in the age to come because a) they don’t understand God’s power, and b) they don’t know the Scripture. He didn’t answer their question directly. He did give them hints about where they were going wrong. This is going to push them into the text yet again. And then they are going to talk together. First the Word, then the words.

With the greatest commandment question, Jesus gives a direct answer. He sides with Hillel. The greatest commandment does not conclude with honor the Sabbath, but with love your neighbor. Luke 10 records that Jesus already covered this ground once before, and it led to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is our neighbor? Everybody, even the most unlikely. And the good neighbor is the one who has mercy on others. (Luke 10:37) Okay but what does that look like practically? Back to the text, and talk yet again. First the Word, then the words.

* * * * *

I have been wondering what kind of questions we would ask Jesus today. How might we try to get him on our side? How might we try to trip him up? How might he point us back to the text? (To be sure, Jesus’ answers would be much more clever than the examples I’m about to give. It’s just an experiment J)

Us: Jesus, Calvinism or Arminianism? Resolve the predestination question!”

Jesus: “Because I have chosen you from the foundation of the world,[10] you should choose this day whom you will serve.[11]”

Us: “So we should choose to be chosen?”

Jesus: (raises one eyebrow)

Me: “Jesus, just how involved can we be with entertainment?”

Jesus: “As it is written, ‘Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine that he drank.’”  (Daniel 1:8)

Us: “But all of his other food was from the king and it didn’t defile him.”

Jesus: “Hmmm.”

Us: “What do you think of our current immigration policies?”

Jesus: “Who is your neighbor?” #goodsamaritanstory

Us: “Both citizen and immigrant.”

Jesus: “What is the most merciful and loving approach for all of them?”

Us: THAT’S THE QUESTION I NEED ANSWERED!!!!

Me: “Jesus, who should I vote for?”

Jesus: As it is written, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people mourn.” (Proverbs 29:2)

* * * * *

I’ve been thinking about what we can learn from Jesus about when to not take sides and when to take sides, when to avoid a question and when to bluntly answer it, and how we live righteously in the midst of tension. Jesus does not give a template; He gives us examples.

The tax issue suggests some issues should be driving all of us back to the text over and over because it’s messy navigating how to be harmless as doves and wise as serpents[12] as children of the Kingdom living in an empire. As I understand it, their answer on the tribute tax would not necessarily place them outside or inside the kingdom of God. I suspect Jesus wanted them to take a stance with ‘clean hands and a pure heart’,[13] not a stance taken from fear of Rome – or love of Rome. Whatever they did, they dare not give to Caesar what ought to be given only to God.

It seems there are questions we will wrestle with as entire communities and perhaps never fully resolve. The Mishnah recorded the conclusions of both Hillel and Shammai, often at odds with each other, on how to live out their faith. Jesus didn’t say it was bad that the camps of Shammai and Hillel both existed. It was an opportunity for iron to sharpen iron[14]. In the end, they would have to study the text over and over, and surrender their hearts for God to search, and then talk. First the Word, and then the words.

The marriage issue suggests we are sometimes just wrong on issues that we feel passionately about because we haven’t studied enough, we have speculated about things we don’t understand, or we don’t understand God. Where was this going to send them? Back to the text, and then talk. First the Word, and then the words.

Once again, Jesus didn’t answer their question. In other cases where being in the kingdom was on the line – “you are making disciples of hell!!!”[15] - Jesus is much more explicit in his teaching. But it seems there are also times when the best solution is to press into the text yet again! JThen, we are better equipped to talk through it with each other.

As for the greatest commandment, Jesus definitively answers this one. I think it’s because if you get this one wrong, you are not going to understand God or the Kingdom of God. Notice, by the way, it’s the greatest commandment, suggesting other really great commandments. Shammai’s emphasis on Sabbath wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the greatest. All the Law and the Prophets hinge on remembering to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Jesus lists two commandments, but says the Law the Prophets hinge on this commandment (singular), as if loving God and loving others cannot be separated. Love is lived. If we love God, we will live in such a way that His love for all passes through us to those around us. All of those around us.

If we can understand that, that would ground us in the midst of all our differences and questions. It will move us ever closer to or deeper into the kingdom of God as we live the love Jesus has shown us.

 _______________________________________________________________________________

[1] I owe a lot to Marty Solomon’s podcast at bemadiscipleship.com, episode 126, “Trapped By A Question.”

[2]  Hat Tip to Cambridge Bible For Schools and Colleges.

[3] HT Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

[4] Paul didn’t write that until later, but it seems to fit J (Romans 12:18)

[5] Hat tip to Pulpit Commentary

[6] In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word for image in Genesis 1:26 is the same word. 

[7] Good reminder that knowing the right answers is not the same as being in the Kingdom of God. Perhaps this man is the wedding guest in Jesus’ previous parable, invited to the feast but lacking the wedding garments only the King can provide.

[8] James 1:26-27

[9] Romans 13

[10] Ephesians 1:4

[11] Joshua 24:15

[12] Matthew 10:16

[13] Psalm 24

[14] Proverbs 27:17

[15] Matthew 23:15

Harmony #79: Fruit, Mold and Mountains (Matthew 21:10-22; John 12:17-19; Mark 11:11-24; Luke 19:45-46)

Let’s talk about figs and fig trees in the Bible.

·   “How miserable I am! I feel like the fruit picker after the harvest who can find nothing to eat. Not a cluster of grapes or a single early fig can be found to satisfy my hunger. The godly people have all disappeared; not one honest person is left on the earth. They are all murderers, setting traps even for their own brothers.” (Micah 7:1-2)

·  “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the ‘first ripe’ in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved.” (Hosea 9:10)

·   “For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, the teeth of a great lion. He has laid my vine [Judah] waste, and barked my fig tree...” (Joel 1:6-7) 

·   “The one who guards a fig tree will eat its fruit, and whoever protects their master/lord will be honored.” (Proverbs 27:18)

So, figs and fig trees are used throughout the Old Testament as a symbol for God’s people, and sometimes very specifically the leaders. In addition, sitting under one’s own fig tree became a common OT image of the Israelite enjoying freedom and prosperity in the land (2 Kings 18:31; Isaiah 36:16; Micah 4:4; Zechariah 3:10); meanwhile, its destruction was a symbol of the nation’s judgment (Jeremiah 5:17; Hosea 2:12; Joel 1:7, 12).

We are going to read an interesting incident in the life of Jesus today, one in which he performs his only recorded “miracle of destruction.” He is going to kill a fig tree. It feels a little jarring because it seems petty and a little mean, like Jesus had a really bad day and he just did not have time for this stupid fig tree!

However, this story wraps around a visit to the temple where the “fig tree” of the leaders of His people are defiling the temple. I am going to suggest that Jesus’ treatment of the fig tree tells his disciples something very important about the future of the Temple and the Sadducees. Let’s read the passage, then talk about what Jesus was doing with the fig tree.

As he entered Jerusalem the whole city was thrown into an uproar, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.” So the crowd who had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead were continuing to testify about it.

Because they had heard that Jesus had performed this miraculous sign, the crowd went out to meet him. Thus the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you can do nothing. Look, the world has run off after him!” Then Jesus went to the temple. And after looking around at everything, he went out to Bethany with the twelve since it was already late.

Now early in the morning  the next day, as they went out from Bethany and returned to the city, Jesus was hungry.[1]After noticing in the distance by the road a fig tree with leaves, he went to see if he could find any fruit on it.

When he came to it he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.  He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again. Never again will there be fruit from you!” And his disciples heard it.

Apparently, fig trees put out leaves and fruit pretty close together. If it has leaves, it should have some kind of fruit. Even before it is “the season for figs,” there are these little early figs that let you know the harvest will happen (the ‘first ripe’ in Hosea 9). They are like a teaser trailer for the upcoming show. This seems to be what is happening. Not only is this tree lying about its fruitfulness, it’s not going to bear fruit when the season hits.

Then they came to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and buying in the temple courts. He turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves,[2] and he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.[3]

Then Jesus began to teach them and said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have turned it into a den of robbers!”[4] The blind and lame came to him in the temple courts, and he healed them.[5]

But when the chief priests and the experts in the law saw the wonderful things he did and heard the children crying out in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?”

Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of children and nursing infants you have prepared praise for yourself’?”[6] The chief priests and the experts in the law heard it and they considered how they could assassinate him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed by his teaching.

When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city to Bethany and spent the night there. In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered to the roots.” When the disciples saw it they were amazed, saying, “How did it wither so quickly?”[7]

Jesus said to them, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you.[8] For this reason I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”[9]

THE TEMPLE AND THE FIG TREES (SADDUCEES)

During Passover, hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims would travel to Jerusalem. They would have to exchange their own currency for temple currency and purchase animals and other items for sacrifices. Guess who controlled this whole process? The Sadducees.

You may remember that ever since the Sadducees asked Herod to be the King of the Jews to appease Rome, the priesthood was a political system controlled by Herod. Instead of priests descending from Zadok (1 Chronicles 24), the empire selected the high priests. As you might expect, this led to bribes and corruption, with the chief priests, captains and treasurers of the temple becoming wealthy and influential families who formed a small, powerful group within society with their own little group of thugs #templeguard to make sure they got their way.[10]

They raised the sacrificial animals, sold them, changed the money (for profit), etc. It was a huge money grift. And they did it in a part of the temple where the Gentiles were supposed to be able to worship.

It seems that Jesus cleared the Temple courtyards twice: once at the beginning of his ministry and once at the end. In Levitical law, there was only one scenario for which God’s people need to do a cleansing twice: mold. If after the first cleansing the priests found no more mold, the house was cleansed again and then the family can move back in. However….

If the mold has spread on the walls, he is to order that the contaminated stones be torn out and thrown into an unclean place outside the town. He must have all the inside walls of the house scraped and the material that is scraped off dumped into an unclean place outside the town.[11] Then they are to take other stones to replace these and take new clay and plaster the house.

If the defiling mold reappears in the house after the stones have been torn out and the house scraped and plastered, the priest is to go and examine it and, if the mold has spread in the house, it is a persistent defiling mold; the house is unclean.  It must be torn down—its stones, timbers and all the plaster—and taken out of the town to an unclean place. (Leviticus 14: 39-45)[12]

Or, to use Jesus’ fig tree imagery, it must be withered to the root.

It turns out that Jesus’ triumphal entry took Jesus to the heart of first-century Judaism: the temple, where Sadducee and Temple trees had lots of leaves - and mold, and no fruit. There was nothing to feed and nourish God’s people. It was maybe even toxic and destructive. They were clearly not being the “light to the nations” that God intended of His people.[13]

I believe the destruction of the fig tree was a tangible rabbinic parable that his disciples understood as pointing to the coming destruction of the priesthood and Temple, “withered to the roots.”[14]

This would indicate two things.

• The rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem will no longer be a goal of redemptive history. The New Covenant Temple is the church in which all are priests (2 Corinthians 6; 1 Peter 2) and believers in whom the Holy Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 3).

• What we now call Judaism will no longer be the primary carrier of the good news that the Kingdom of Heaven is here. It’s meant to be the church: the new temple, with a new priesthood.[15] This does not mean we don’t appreciate and learn from the beautiful foundation of the Old Covenant – they were God’s chosen people - but the mantle has been passed, like Elijah to Elisha, to the New Covenant people.

We must take this seriously. We are not immune from the dangers facing the followers of God in the time of Jesus. We are called to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ to produce fruit of righteousness that draws the nations to Jesus with words and lives free of hypocrisy, greed, and the love of power.

It struck me yesterday that the Jewish people’s greatest threat had never been other nations in the Bible. It was always themselves. Babylon could take their bodies into exile, and Egypt could enslave them, and Rome could kill them, but the mold that withered them to the root came from within. Say what we will about the course of this country depending how elections go and what the future may look like for followers of Jesus, but nothing out there threatens the church as much as the mold of false and corrupted worship threatens the church.

We are called to not only be God’s temple but to keep His Temple, the church, holy: set apart, pure, full of truth and grace, characterized by generosity, humility, and the kind of love that is will to be broken and spilled out for others in honor of our Savior.

We may will need His cleansing power at times to drive out sin from our personal and corporate temples.  The mold has got to go. Pride. Greed. Unforgiveness. Immorality. Gossip. Slander. Division. Judgment. Untruth. Meanness. Pettiness.

Nothing should get between us and our mission: to glorify the goodness of God with the entirety of our lives, and to demonstrate in all that we do the compelling message of salvation, life and hope that is grounded in Jesus and experienced in His church. I like how Adam Clarke summarizes what Jesus was doing here.

“Having condemned the profane use of the temple, he now shows the proper use of it. It is a house of prayer, where God is to manifest his goodness and power in giving sight to the spiritually blind, and feet to the [spiritually] lame. The church in which the [spiritually] blind and the lame are not healed has no Christ in it, and is not worthy of attendance.” (Adam Clarke)

That’s not scripture, but I think it’s inspired in its own way. I know I’m convicted as I apply that to myself.

• When people are around me who are spiritually struggling or lost, are they healed as I show the presence of Christ in me – God’s truth, grace, love, hope, kindness – or are they hurt?

• Did they pick up some mold from being around me? Or do they leave with maybe a little mold gone, or at least some tools to get rid of it, because the Holy Spirit has worked in our time together?

• Am I just leafy – because I can put on a show if I need to – or is the fruit of the Holy Spirit evident such that my attitudes, words, thoughts, and actions nourish those in my presence with the goodness of God’s provision?

I urge you to consider this for yourself. With your family, you friends, at work, when you are here on Sundays and Wednesdays,

What is the fruit you demonstrate in your character or offer as a service to those around you – not as a show, but as a gift of nourishment in Christ?

What might be the mold clinging to you that Jesus needs to cleanse? What needs to be driven out lest you begin to wither?

If you think this sounds like a daunting task, it is. Good news: Jesus tells his disciples what to do right here in this passage. If the disciples demonstrate faith in God – if they live faithfully - they can remove the mountainous problem of fruitlessness and mold.

When rabbis told parables[16], they wanted a physical representation to make their point. Jesus is likely standing on the Mount of Olives with the Herodian and the Temple Mount in sight. He is probably pointing toward one of these. I lean toward the Herodian, but it’s not a hill I will die on J Why? Because “faith” almost always means “faithfulness” – trust in action – and the Herodian gives a prime example of what seemingly insurmountable hurdles can in fact be conquered when we put one foot in front of the other over and over in the service of a cause.

The Herodian was a mountain fortress overlooking the town of Bethlehem built on a mountain Herod had commanded be literally moved from one location to the place he wanted it to be. One shovelful at a time. If you think of faithfulness as “steadfast commitment,” that’s what it took to literally move a mountain.

Jesus once told his disciples that faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains. He wanted his followers to know that our lived out faith can accomplish far more than the most amazing earthly feats. You’re impressed that Herod, a ruler of the Empire, moved a mountain? Wait until you see what can be moved with the authority and power of the ruler of the universe behind the faithful witness of your life.

You know what’s more amazing than moving a mountain of stone?

• Being freed from addiction.

• Learning how to control your words.

• Having pride replaced with humility.

• Learning how to really, truly love that person.

• Becoming patient when you have been characterized by impatience for so long.

• Learning to see people as imago dei instead of objects of lust.

• Being moved from greed to generosity.

• Replacing a reputation for being caustic and rude with a reputation for being kind.

• Seeing the fruit of the Spirit[17] – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – replace the mold of sin.

To go back to today’s text, what about that mountain of fruitlessness, mold, and hypocrisy? Is it even possible to move that mountain? Yes, and the disciples will show that in the book of Acts. They will faithfully go into all the world and preach the Gospel. Historians believe the Christian population grew by 40 percent a decade: probably about 1,000 Christians in AD 40 to 33 million in AD 350.

Mountains are moved when Jesus works within our lived out faith. I like the old joke, “How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time.” How do we move mountains? One faithful shovel at a time, one righteous moment after another, whether it’s in our individual lives, our church life, or our concern for our nation.

And may God, who is a Good Father, be so good as to cleanse His Temple for our good, the good of the world, and God’s glory.

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[1] “Recalls God’s statement that his bringing Israel out of Egypt was like the joy of finding early figs and his later complaint that Israel’s idolatry and injustice rendered the nation barren and without justice (Hos 9:7–17; Mic 6:1—7:6)…In spite of God’s gift of his law and the land, and his presence now in Jesus, Israel and its leaders have failed to produce the justice and mercy God desires…Jesus, as Israel’s Lord, enacts that image in fulfillment of Malachi’s threatened curse upon the land (Mal 4:6) and hence his following announcement of the destruction of the temple.” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[2] The cleansing of the temple by Jesus is reminiscent of how kings like Hezekiah (2 Chr 29–31) and Josiah (2 Chr 34–35) repaired the temple prior to the celebration of Passover. (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[3] This is the second time Jesus has cleansed the Temple courtyard, reminiscent of Jeremiah twice cursing the temple (Jeremiah 7 and 26). There are soooo many Old Testament hyperlinks in the life and teaching of Jesus.

[4] “Perhaps ‘robbers’ should be translated ‘nationalist rebel’ (as in Jeremiah 7:11). The temple was meant to be a house of prayer, but… had become, like the first temple, the premier symbol of a superstitious belief that God would protect and rally his people irrespective of their conformity to his will.” (Expositors Bible Commentary)

[5] “Most Jewish authorities forbade any person lame, blind, deaf, or mute from offering a sacrifice or appearing before the Lord in his temple. But Jesus heals them, thus showing that "one greater than the temple is here" (12:6).

[6] Jesus here quotes the Greek of Psalm 8:2; Hebrew reads “strength” instead of “praise.”

[7] When they say, “How did you do it so quickly?” I tend to think they knew what Jesus was doing and are wondering how the Sadducees will be dealt with so quickly. They will be in AD 70, when the Temple and the Sadducees are destroyed.

[8] The Eastern Orthodox tradition is all in on the literalness of this. “While it is not recorded that an apostle literally moved a mountain, the Fathers are clear that they had this authority if the need had arisen (certain saints did make crevices appear in mountains). Furthermore, not everything the apostles accomplished was written down.” Orthodox Study Bible) I love the “not everything was written down.” This would suggest they might have moved mountains, but it never made it into the historical record, as if moving the mountain was never the point. I don’t prefer a literalist reading of this teaching, but I appreciate their bold and confident perspective.

[9] NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible

[10] HT NIV Women’s Study Bible

[11] I suspect the ‘unclean place’ in Jesus time was the Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, which Jesus references multiple times as a place of punishment and destruction.

[12] Side note: Jesus is about to tell some parables that include this kind of cleansing in which people are cast out to places of judgment, very similar to this scenario.

[13] “The tree is fully leafed, and in such a state one would normally expect to find fruit. This symbolizes the hypocrisy and sham of the nation of Israel. The “withered” fig tree likely stands for the nation’s coming destruction.” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

“The tree with its leaves had the marks of fruitfulness, but it bore no fruit. Israel was likewise practicing hypocrisy (Mk 7:6)…Jesus might also have been illustrating religious hypocrites like the ones he had thrown out of the temple.” (NIV Women’s Study Bible)

“There were leaves, which speak of profession, but no fruit for God. Jesus was hungry for fruit from the nation.” (Believers Bible Commentary)

[14] HT NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible

[15] ESV Reformation Study Bible

[16]  “Many of the rabbins are termed rooters up of mountains, because they were dexterous in removing difficulties, solving cases of conscience, etc. In this sense our Lord's words are to be understood. He that has faith will get through every difficulty and perplexity. Mountains shall become molehills or plains before him. The saying is neither to be taken in its literal sense, nor is it hyperbolical: it is a proverbial form of speech.” (Adam Clarke)

 [17] Galatians 5

Harmony #78: Mary, Martha, and Jesus (John 11:55-12:11; Matthew 26:6-16; Mark 14:3-11; Luke 10: 38-42)

Have you heard the phrase, “Can’t see the forest for all of the trees?” Today’s passage has a lot of trees. We will look at them first, because those trees have something to offer, and then the forest, because the Big Picture matters.

Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, and many people went up to Jerusalem from the rural areas before the Passover to cleanse themselves ritually. Thus they were looking for Jesus, and saying to one another as they stood in the temple courts,“What do you think? That he won’t come to the feast?” Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should report it, so that they could arrest him.

Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom he had raised from the dead. While Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, they prepared a dinner for him there. Lazarus was among those present at the table with him. Martha was serving, distracted with all the preparations she had to make, while her sister Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. Martha came up to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.”

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her.”

This incident apparently happens after Lazarus was raised from the dead. Martha is doing what anyone would do who had a distinguished guest: seeking to honor him by taking care of him. I mean, HE RAISED HER BROTHER FROM THE DEAD.

This was crucial. When Jesus talks with her, his approach suggests he is not mad or scolding. He may even be saying, “I see how much you are worried about honoring me well.” Mary “chose the best part,” as if what Martha chose was good, but not the highest good in that moment.[1]

Today, we might reference a personality test or a love language test to explain their different responses to Jesus. “Oh, Martha is acts of service. Mary is quality time.” Jesus, who knows how to love well, speaks their love language.  What did Jesus give Mary? Quality time. What did and will Jesus give Mary in raising Lazarus and dying on the cross? Acts of service. So I don’t think this is a blanket criticism of Martha. There’s something about the moment, the timing, the opportunity right in front of her.

I wonder if this has something to tell us about “be with” Jesus contrasted with “do for” Jesus. Both are good, but neither is a template for every moment. In that moment, it was better to “be with.”

We must remember that there is a place for “be with” and “do for” as we follow Jesus. Both honor Jesus. Both have an important place. We want to be with Jesus and live for Jesus, right? He’s going to give all the disciples marching orders when he leaves; he’s already sent them out on short missions. “Do for” is a good thing, but it’s not the only thing, and it can’t be isolated from “be with.”

It’s hard not to judge when we see others leaning into one approach when we really like the other. Martha thinks Mary should be “doing for” Jesus just like her, but that wasn’t true. Mary was in the right place. It’s easy to think the focus we choose (doing or being) is THE RIGHT WAY FOR EVERYBODY, but…we don’t know that to be true.

Sometimes, I need to do things for my wife: the dishes, put away my laundry, fix that sink, make smoked wings for the Ohio State game, give her my receipts from Menards so we can get that 11% back. Sometimes, I need to just be with her: watching The Great British Bake-off together, going on a date, collecting rocks at Point Betsie, going to the fair, watching Florida State football so she has a shoulder to cry on.

Both matter.

“Be with” and “do for” are intertwined when you love somebody. So, I think Mary and Martha show us two legitimate responses to Jesus. I wish I knew where to land this plane, but I don’t. Maybe this is a good topic to pursue during lunch today.

Then Mary came with an alabaster jar[2] of three quarters of a pound of expensive aromatic oil from pure nard.[3]After breaking open the jar, she poured it on his head[4] and anointed his feet, as Jesus was at the table. She then wiped his feet dry with her hair. (Now the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil.)

The Jewish people put nard on those who died to mask the smell, because there was a process of interring the body that lasted long enough to make you want to use nard. In the next paragraph, Jesus will affirm that she was, indeed, preparing him for his burial.[5]

Worth noting: nard in an alabaster jar like this was shipped in from a place that harvested (?) the nard before bottling it and sealing it. This bottle cost a year’s average wages. This bottle represented a plan for someone in the family of Mary. I wonder if it was what they had planned to use for Lazarus, but then didn’t need to. Or… Jesus will say shortly of Mary, “She did what she could.” I wonder if this was set aside for her?

And wiping his feet with her hair? It was unheard of for a Jewish woman to let her hair down in public, let alone wash the feet of a man not her husband, let alone with her hair. There is something going on here, but I am still working on this. This is the second time a woman has dried Jesus’ feet with her hair. (Luke 7)[6]

Whatever the case, Mary communicated something important: she believed Jesus when he said he was going to die. I doubt she anticipated crucifixion, as Jesus was not a Zealot, but she may have been connecting the dots and concluding that she wouldn’t be able to do this later. As Jesus points out, she was honoring him while she could.

Out of love, honor and the knowledge that “the end” was near for Jesus, she offered the lock of her hair with willing abandon to the one who is about to die in order to win the battle on behalf of a world that God loves. Bless the Lord.

But some who were present indignantly said to one another, “Why this waste of expensive ointment? It could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor!” So they spoke angrily to her. Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was going to betray him) said, “Why wasn’t this oil sold for three hundred silver coins and the money given to the poor?” (Now Judas said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money box, he used to steal what was put into it.)

When Jesus learned of this, he said to them, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a good service for me. For you will always have the poor with you,[7] and you can do good for them whenever you want. You will not always have me! She did what she could. When she poured this oil on my body, she did it to anoint my body beforehand and prepare me for the day of my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

In Matthew’s account of this story, Jesus had just taught them about reward and punishment related to caring for the needy (25:31–46). He concluded with, “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.” So it makes sense this was in the front of the disciple’s minds.

Jesus’ response pointed them back to the Torah. They were commanded to take care of the poor; Deuteronomy 15 uses the exact phrase Jesus used. This would probably remind them of not just all the teaching in Deuteronomy 15, but of all the times God told his people to care for the poor. It was baked into the rhythm of their lives. In fact, if they did everything the Old Testament commanded, it would be difficult for someone to remain poor in Israel.

• debts were forgiven every 7 years (Deuteronomy 15)

• land was returned every 50 years (Leviticus 25)

• food was shared (Proverbs 22:9)

• indebted servants were set free with provision after 7 years (Deuteronomy 15)

• the edges of their fields were left for the poor to harvest (Leviticus 23:22)

• fields were unplanted every 7 years so the poor could harvest volunteer plants (Leviticus 25)

• they were to “open their hand wide” to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:11)

• they were to practice generous giving (Psalm 37:21; Proverbs 14:21)

Bottom line: the disciples were not wrong in principle,[8] but in this moment they were wrong in practice. If Mary was preparing him for burial, she should not be criticized any more than we would criticize someone for purchasing a coffin for a loved one, even though there are poor that could be fed with that money.

Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

This is when Judas snaps. Different people have offered different reasons since the text leaves space to fill in the blanks.

• I noted last week that I suspect Judas was looking to spark an insurrection. Jesus has apparently resigned himself to die. Dead men can’t be kings. Let’s get this king on the throne before he dies!  Time to start the fight!

• Or….Judas knows Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Huge crowds were there because the word had gotten out. Maybe Judas thought there was nothing to worry about. Get the fight started; Jesus will be fine!

• Or… Judas betrayed Jesus because he had stopped believing in him. Something about what happened here convinced him not to back Jesus anymore.

 Whatever the reason, it’s interesting that this is incident that is the last straw for Judas. Meanwhile, the 30 pieces of silver he received has precedence.

• Exodus 21 demands this as payment if a slave is gored to death by a bull. So, perhaps we could think of this as the Sadducees giving Judas recompense for the person they are about to kill.

• 30 pieces of silver was also the wage paid to the reliable shepherd of God’s people in Zechariah 11,[9] a passage that also talks about throwing the money to a potter. Hmmm. 

These Old Testament connections are, in fact, both true.  Jesus is a duolos, a servant or slave depending on the translation you use. 

[Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant/slave (duolos), being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross! (Philippians 2) 

And, Jesus is a shepherd. 

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14-15) 

Alright, let’s step back from the trees and look at the forest. There is this nagging voice in my head that insists there is a contrast going on, not of a good and bad thing but of a good and better thing. I’m not quite sure how to put words to it.

• The place for the practical (Martha) and the prophetic (Mary)

• The practice of stewardship by fasting (taking care of the poor) and feasting (honoring and celebrating)

• The ‘do for’ (Martha) and the ‘be with’ (Mary)

• Prudence (provision budgeted for charity) and extravagance (provision budgeted for honoring)

I wonder if we are supposed to be reminded that in the midst of a discipleship that is often characterized by prudence and the stewardship of fasting that includes setting up a budget from which we give generously from our resources to those in need, there is always going to be a place in the Kingdom of God for extravagant honor.[10] 

In this case, we see it bestowed on Jesus, and rightfully so. In Mary’s case, it’s an act of worship for Jesus. The King will be honored as a King. Bless the Lord with the best that you have. We can’t honor the physical Jesus like Mary did, but surely this challenges us to ask ourselves if Jesus is honored by the worshipful sacrifices that we do give.

I wonder if we are supposed to be thinking about how to honor the children of the King, too. We can become so caught up in fixing what’s broken in the world that we forget to celebrate what’s right in the world. Like Mary and Martha, this is not either/or. It’s both/and.  

God wants his people to learn how to honor what is good through celebration. God wants his people to know how to throw a righteous party that reminds people that they are precious, valuable and loved, not only by God but by God’s people.

• When I turned 50, friends threw me a party that was wonderfully extravagant. I still think about it. I have posters on my wall from it.

• I have helped friends with projects this summer, and they paid me wages that made me consider that I had undervalued myself.

• I have friends who bless us from their abundance by letting us stay for free in a wonderful Air B and B that brings us rest.

Helping those who are financial impoverish matters. Generous charity should be baked into the rhythm of our lives. But at times, extravagant celebration can be huge for those who are emotionally and mentally impoverished, struggling with all kinds of inner battles, desperately needing provision and rest of a different kind.

It’s the one to whom Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The Holy Spirit ministers in ways we never could; sometimes, gifts that cost time and money remind people that they matter not just in God’s eyes but in the eyes of God’s people. And some days, that’s a game changer, maybe even a life saver.

During our potluck, let’s feast together today in a way that shows the depth and breadth of God’s provision. Let the abundance of food remind us that we all need to experience an abundance of honor, or friendship, of community that reminds us constantly of the value of the imago dei, the image of God in us all.

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[1] “Chosen the good part—not in the general sense of Moses' choice (Heb 11:25), and Joshua's (Jos 24:15), and David's (Ps 119:30); that is, of good in opposition to bad; but, of two good ways of serving and pleasing the Lord, choosing the better.” (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary)

[2] “The vessel is likely a long-necked flask made of translucent, finely carved stone standing some five to ten inches high. The perfume is pure nard (see Mark 14:3; John 12:3), an oil extracted from the root of the nard plant grown in India. This is not a typical household oil for anointing, but an expensive perfume oil used for a solemn and special act of devotion. By breaking the flask Mary…is performing the highest act of consecration to Jesus, even to the anointing of his feet (cf. John 12:3).” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds of the New Testament)

[3] An average year’s wages.

[4] “Such long-necked containers have been found in tombs from this period near Jerusalem; people apparently lavished the ointment on deceased loved ones. This expensive perfume may have been planned for a funeral, either a future one or one canceled because of Jesus’ healing ministry. Providing a guest with oil to anoint his head could be simple courtesy, but one could also anoint a king in this way (2Ki 9:6).” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[5] “The anointing…"prepares" him for his burial after dying the death of a criminal, for only in that circumstance would the customary anointing of the body be omitted.” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary) 

[6] Because so much of Jesus’ life and teaching refers back to the Old Testament, here’s a thought. Judges records that after a woman named Jael killed the Canaanite general who was attacking Israel, the Israelites defeated Canaan. The judge at the time, Deborah, and her general, Barak, wrote this song: “When the locks of the women are long in Israel, when the people offer themselves with willing abandon - bless the LORD!  –Judges 4:18–5:2”  Read more at “Extravagant Worship: Mary Washing Jesus’ Feet.” Fruitfullywomen.com

[7] “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11)

[8] This is how one of the early Church Fathers thought of this scenario. “If anyone had asked Christ before the woman did this, He would not have approved it. But after she had done it, He looks only to the gift itself. For after the fragrant oil had been poured, what good was a rebuke? Likewise, if you should see anyone providing a sacred vessel or ornament for the walls of the church, do not spoil his zeal. But if beforehand he asks about it, command him to give instead to the poor.” (John Chrysostom, quoted in the Orthodox Study Bible)

[9] I told them “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord.” (Zechariah 11: 12-13)

[10] I’m thinking now of Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born, to die, to plant, to uproot, to kill, to heal, to tear down, to build, to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to scatter stones, to gather them, to embrace, to refrain from embracing, to search, to give up, to keep, to throw away, to tear, to mend, to be silent, to speak, to love, to hate, for war and for peace.”

Harmony #77: Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-28)

While the people were listening to these things (“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”), Jesus proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.

Note that he told a parable because a) he was near Jerusalem and b) the people had some thoughts about the Kingdom of God appearing. We will come back to that.

Therefore he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. And he summoned ten of his slaves, gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to be king over us!’

When he returned after receiving the kingdom, he summoned these slaves to whom he had given the money. He wanted to know how much they had earned by trading. So the first one came before him and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And the king said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been faithful in a very small matter, you will have authority over ten cities.’

Then the second one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made five minas.’  So the king said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ Then another slave came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina that I put away for safekeeping in a piece of cloth. For I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You withdraw what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.’

The king said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! So you knew, did you, that I was a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow? Why then didn’t you put my money in the bank, so that when I returned I could have collected it with interest?’ And he said to his attendants, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has ten.’

But they said to him, ‘Sir, he has ten minas already!” He replied, ‘I tell you that everyone who has will be given more, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and slaughter them in front of me!’ “ After Jesus had said this, he continued on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

This parable just sits there between the calling of Nicodemus and the entrance to Jerusalem starting the final week of Jesus’ life. It feels awkward and disjointed. But, since Luke committed to writing “an orderly account,” there must be something here that’s an important part of an ongoing bigger story.

On the one hand, there’s a practical reading that looks at stewardship: If God gives you provision and talents, use them to multiply the kingdom. That’s a common teaching taken from this parable. I agree with the principle of that teaching, though I’’m not sure I would take it from this parable.

First, though it’s popular to see Jesus as the king figure in this parable, it is hard for me to conceive that Jesus would be the ruler who has left and then returns. His character and nature are not like the third servant describes (“a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow).

Second, if that ruler is Jesus, the parable suggests that when God gives the gifts of the Kingdom to his children, if they don't double what he gives them, God gets so angry that he destroys them. If Jesus is God in the flesh – so, God is like Jesus - that doesn't track with anything we have seen about Jesus so far.  We just read Jesus saying to Zacchaeus, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” not punish the fearful. 

Third, I'm not sure what to think about the teaching of those having much getting more and those having little losing what they have. Didn’t we just hear about the lost sheep, and lost coin, and the two lost sons, and God pursues and loves them? If the ruler is Jesus, this is joltingly the opposite. He has kept calling his disciples “you of little faith,” and he didn’t throw them away. He discipled them.

The best explanation I have found involves a historical event that happened around the time of Jesus. When Herod the Great died (this is the Herod the Sadducees convinced to be the “King of the Jews” and who controlled the Temple priests), he willed his kingdom to his three sons. The three sons sailed to Rome on three different ships to bring gifts to Caesar and ask him to honor their father’s will. The Jewish Pharisees sent a delegation on a fourth ship to plead with Caesar not to make Antipas king. 

As a result, Caesar decided to name Anitpas a “tetrarch” (just lower than a king).  Antipas blamed the Jews for the decision; when he got back, he made an example of the Jews who were left at home and slaughtered them by the thousands. When Jesus stands in front of Herod in the final week of his life, he is standing in front of (drumroll) Herod Antipas.

I am leaning heavily toward the notion that Jesus is challenging how those who “thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately” expected the kingdom of God to appear. I think they wanted him to take it like a Herod would take it, and Jesus is having none of it.

Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem for Passover. He has a huge crowd of disciples, and they lead the adoring crowds in welcoming him into Jerusalem as a king. All the kingly symbols are there:

• the cloaks on the ground (what the people did for Jehu in 2 Kings 9:13–14)

• palm branches (1 Maccabees 13:51 records the use of palm branches in a celebration of Judas the Hammer, a Zealot who led the Maccabean Revolt)

• crying Hosanna (“Help us!”)

• saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (also what they said of Jehu)

• Jesus riding donkey (Zechariah 9:9)

They thought they might finally be getting a King, a deliverer who would set up an earthy kingdom by copying Rome’s pax romana (“peace by the sword”). They didn’t like Rome, but they had no problem with THEIR guy using the tools and method of Rome to bring about THEIR own kingdom. But…this is the thing about Rome.

• Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks. #parablereference

• Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them. #parablereference

• Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery. #parablereference

When Jesus sees his people welcome him with a not so subtle reference to take out Rome with Rome’s methods, here is how he responds:

Now when Jesus approached and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you had only known on this day, even you, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and surround you and close in on you from every side. They will demolish you—you and your children within your walls—and they will not leave within you one stone on top of another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)

Why is this going to happen? They have the wrong idea about what will bring peace because “they did not recognize the time of their visitation from God.” The visitation of God is Jesus; Jesus is telling them what will bring peace, and they are not picking up what he is laying down.

History had shown that, at the end of the day, the Jewish people kept defaulting to the path of the Zealots. When Jesus read from Isaiah in his hometown and declared the year of the Lord’s favor but left off the line about God’s vengeance,[1] his hometown tried to kill him because they knew what he was saying. God’s favor was going to become available to all, and they were not okay with that. God was going to bring peace by reconciling everyone first to Himself and then to each other, and that meant nobody was going to pay for the crimes done against them. 

For many of them (the Zealots for sure), the kingdom of God would arrive by taking the sword to those who hurt them. And that's what a Caesar or a Nero would do. That’s what happened in Jesus’ parable. That’s what Antipas did to those who displeased him. And this is the approach the Jewish people kept revisiting over and over. Even the non-Zealots seemed to keep rallying around the sword to solve their problems and usher in the Kingdom of God.

We've got good biblical reason to believe that this Zealot thread kept running through Jesus’ disciples no matter how often he taught and lived differently.

I’ve noted before that that Judas and Simon were both zealots. Judas had a nickname “Iscariot,” a nickname that seems to place him among the sicarii, one of the "dagger-men" of the Zealots who had committed to killing Roman soldiers whenever he could with his dagger that shared his nickname. I'm leaning more and more toward the idea that when we get to the last week in the life of Jesus, Judas was intending to be the spark that started the revolution.

Judas knew that if he went to the high priests, they would come for Jesus. Remember, the high priests are the Sadducees. They love Rome, and they have been trying to kill Jesus because Jesus is putting their status with Rome in jeopardy. At one point Caiaphas tells the Sanhedrin that it’s better to kill one person, Jesus, than to have them all killed.[2] Judas knows that the Sadducees’ private army of bodyguards will have no problem pulling a sword on Jesus. They had a reputation for doing that kind of thing to those who crossed the Sadducees.

It’s an odd collaboration. The Zealots hated the Sadducees because they were such compromisers. Clearly, Judas is just using them. The text doesn't say this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were Zealots hiding nearby, waiting for the fight to begin. What a shock it must have been when Peter - who brought a sword to a garden prayer time? - starts the fight and Jesus promptly stops it.

Let's fast forward to the trial where Herod does what Herod always did at Passover, which was to offer a released prisoner to the Jewish people. He gives them the option of Jesus the Christ or Jesus Barabbas. The crowd chooses Barabbas, who had been arrested because he had already engaged in violent insurrection.  They want their Zealot who knows how to fight on their terms.

I suspect part of the reason Jesus wept was because he knew what would happen when God’s people try to bring about the Kingdom of God at the edge of a sword. He warned Peter: “You live by it, you die by it.” Why are the Jewish people slaughtered and the Temple destroyed in AD 70? The Zealots keep pushing and pushing and pushing until Rome snapped.

So, full circle back to the parable. I think Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and he reminded them of what Herod was like, and how empires work. He will never be that kind of King, and his kingdom should never be that kind of Kingdom.

* * * * *

I've been thinking a lot this week about what principles we take away from this. If you recall, the Jewish people wrestled with three responses to the question, “What do we do with Rome?”

• Compromise, embrace it, learn to love it (Sadducees and Herodians)

• Retreated and just focus on being holy (Essenes and Pharisees)

• Fight Rome with the weapons of Rome (Zealots)

Jesus has challenged all of these approaches throughout the course of his ministry. He doesn't retreat from the culture around him; instead he goes to the Gentiles (Samaritans and Romans). He doesn't embrace the culture; he embraces the people in the culture as individuals and calls them to follow him. He doesn't pick up a sword – unless it’s the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, which he seem him wielding in Revelation. Let’s go back to what characterized Rome and Herod Antipas.

• Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks.

• Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them.

• Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery.

  How is Jesus a different kind of King?

·Those outside the kingdom were not destroyed in the process of expanding the kingdom. They were literally still alive to have access to the Kingdom. Jesus just kept inviting himself to the home of the sinner, the Samaritan, the tax collector. He kept inviting people. The banquet table has enough seats for everybody.

On the cross, he asks God to forgive those who crucified him rather than asking him to smite them. He will restore Peter, who might have betrayed him more than Judas when he called down curses and said, “I don’t know my own rabbi.” Okay, important trivia (?) When Jesus rose, the women at the grave were told to take the news “to the disciples and Peter.”[3] It’s only been three days. Why isn’t Peter just assumed to still be a disciple? Because he denied and cursed his rabbi. He was done. There was no coming back from that. When Jesus sees him again, where is he? Back to fishing. He was done. AND JESUS RESTORES HIM. This is not an earthly kingdom; this is a heavenly kingdom.

Jesus was not about rewarding the competent and punishing the incompetent #peteronceagain. Remember the Parable of the Two Brothers (Prodigal Son). Remember the Parable of Workers working all day vs. one hour. Jesus is excited about giving everyone the spiritual spoils of the Kingdom, whether they are crushing it or floundering or lost like that sheep. Everybody sits at the banquet table. Surely there is reward in walking in the Path of Life as we harvest what we have planted, but God is not a stingy and petty God, turning his nose up at the Samaritan and tax collector and prodigal. He came to seek and to save the lost, after all. That’s what he loves to do.

Let's see if we can make this practical for our situation today.

We are not living in a nation that brings a sword against followers of Jesus like Herod Antipas. We do, however, live in a culture that will at times challenge us on aspects of what we believe or how we believe we should live our faith. How do we respond to living in spiritually occupied territory of Babylon/Rome (to use Revelation’s imagery)?

I'm hearing rumbles in some circles that we might be looking at a time that is ripe for a second Civil War. It's often accompanied with the stated desire to get America back to Judeo/Christian roots even if it requires violence, as if we can spread or solidify the Kingdom of God at the point of a sword. That just doesn't sound like Jesus. That sounds like Judas.

But there's also a level to this that stops short of violence physical violence. I'm thinking now of emotional, verbal and maybe even spiritual violence. When we talk about the culture wars, we can mean one of two things.

• We can mean that there is a clash anytime Christians live in spaces with non-Christians simply because we are going to value different things for different reasons,  and we are going to offer our worship and allegiance to different gods or idols. In that sense, yeah, there's going to be a war in the sense that there is conflict and tension. Legit. This has always been true.

• We can also use Culture Wars to mean it is time for us to get out there and fight fight fight – but…. it's not usually accompanied with language asking what it looks to fight like Jesus. It's usually much more pragmatic Zealotry, with a physical or symbolic peace by the sword in that the ends will justify the means if we aren’t careful. A public figure who aligns with Christians noted recently, in reference to the aforementioned culture wars, “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing…”

But here's the reality. The means determine who we are in the end. If we fight like Rome to further the Kingdom of God, the society we usher in will just be Rome by another name. And if this is our hope, we will constantly be searching for peace and not finding peace because we didn't fight like Jesus as we pointed toward Jesus. The apostle Paul – who knew a thing or two about fighting battles in the wrong way - reminded us how to fight like Jesus, for Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, draw your strength and might from God. Put on the full armor of God to protect yourselves from the devil and his evil schemes. We’re not waging war against enemies of flesh and blood alone.   No, this fight is against tyrants, against authorities, against supernatural powers and demon princes that slither in the darkness of this world, and against wicked spiritual armies that lurk about in heavenly places. And this is why you need to be head-to-toe in the full armor of God: so you can resist during these evil days and be fully prepared to hold your ground. Yes, stand—truth banded around your waist, righteousness as your chest plate, and feet protected in preparation to proclaim the good news of peace. Don’t forget to raise the shield of faith above all else, so you will be able to extinguish flaming spears hurled at you from the wicked one. Take also the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray always. Pray in the Spirit. Pray about everything in every way you know how! And keeping all this in mind, prayon behalf of God’s people. Keep on praying feverishly, and be on the lookout until evil has been stayed.  (Ephesians 6:10-18)

 ____________________________________________________________________

[1] Luke 4

[2] John 11:45-57

[3] Mark 16:7

Harmony #77: Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-28)

While the people were listening to these things (“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”), Jesus proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.

Note that he told a parable because a) he was near Jerusalem and b) the people had some thoughts about the Kingdom of God appearing. We will come back to that.

Therefore he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. And he summoned ten of his slaves, gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to be king over us!’

When he returned after receiving the kingdom, he summoned these slaves to whom he had given the money. He wanted to know how much they had earned by trading. So the first one came before him and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And the king said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been faithful in a very small matter, you will have authority over ten cities.’

Then the second one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has made five minas.’  So the king said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ Then another slave came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina that I put away for safekeeping in a piece of cloth. For I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You withdraw what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.’

The king said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! So you knew, did you, that I was a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow? Why then didn’t you put my money in the bank, so that when I returned I could have collected it with interest?’ And he said to his attendants, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has ten.’

But they said to him, ‘Sir, he has ten minas already!” He replied, ‘I tell you that everyone who has will be given more, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and slaughter them in front of me!’ “ After Jesus had said this, he continued on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

This parable just sits there between the calling of Nicodemus and the entrance to Jerusalem starting the final week of Jesus’ life. It feels awkward and disjointed. But, since Luke committed to writing “an orderly account,” there must be something here that’s an important part of an ongoing bigger story.

First, though it’s popular to see Jesus as the king figure in this parable, it is hard for me to conceive that Jesus would be the ruler who has left and then returns. I recognize that I am in the minority view here. But H=his character and nature are not like the third servant describes (“a severe man, withdrawing what I didn’t deposit and reaping what I didn’t sow).

Second, if that ruler is Jesus, the parable suggests that when God gives the gifts of the Kingdom to his children, if they don't double what he gives them, God gets so angry that he destroys them. If Jesus is God in the flesh – so, God is like Jesus - that doesn't track with anything we have seen about Jesus so far.  We just read Jesus saying to Zacchaeus, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” not punish the fearful.

Third, I'm not sure what to think about the teaching of those having much getting more and those having little losing what they have. Didn’t we just hear about the lost sheep, and lost coin, and the two lost sons, and God pursues and loves them? If the ruler is Jesus, this is joltingly the opposite. He has kept calling his disciples “you of little faith,” and he didn’t throw them away. He discipled them.

The best explanation I have found involves a historical event that happened around the time of Jesus. When Herod the Great died (this is the Herod the Sadducees convinced to be the “King of the Jews” and who controlled the Temple priests), he willed his kingdom to his three sons. The three sons sailed to Rome on three different ships to bring gifts to Caesar and ask him to honor their father’s will. The Jewish Pharisees sent a delegation on a fourth ship to plead with Caesar not to make Antipas king. 

As a result, Caesar decided to name Anitpas a “tetrarch” (just lower than a king).  Antipas blamed the Jews for the decision; when he got back, he made an example of the Jews who were left at home and slaughtered them by the thousands. When Jesus stands in front of Herod in the final week of his life, he is standing in front of (drumroll) Herod Antipas. 

I am leaning heavily toward the notion that Jesus is challenging how those who “thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately” expected the kingdom of God to appear. I think they wanted him to take it like a Herod would take it, and Jesus is having none of it.

Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem for Passover. He has a huge crowd of disciples, and they lead the adoring crowds in welcoming him into Jerusalem as a king. All the kingly symbols are there:

• the cloaks on the ground (what the people did for Jehu in 2 Kings 9:13–14)

• palm branches (1 Maccabees 13:51 records the use of palm branches in a celebration of Judas the Hammer, a Zealot who led the Maccabean Revolt)

• crying Hosanna (“Help us!”)

• ·saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (also what they said of Jehu)

• ·Jesus riding donkey (Zechariah 9:9)

They thought they might finally be getting a King, a deliverer who would set up an earthy kingdom by copying Rome’s pax romana (“peace by the sword”). They didn’t like Rome, but they had no problem with THEIR guy using the tools and method of Rome to bring about THEIR own kingdom. But…this is the thing about Rome.

• ·Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks. #parablereference

• ·Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them. #parablereference

• ·Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery. #parablereference

When Jesus sees his people welcome him with a not so subtle reference to take out Rome with Rome’s methods, here is how he responds:

Now when Jesus approached and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you had only known on this day, even you, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and surround you and close in on you from every side. They will demolish you—you and your children within your walls—and they will not leave within you one stone on top of another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)

Why is this going to happen? They have the wrong idea about what will bring peace because “they did not recognize the time of their visitation from God.” The visitation of God is Jesus; Jesus is telling them what will bring peace, and they are not picking up what he is laying down.

History had shown that, at the end of the day, the Jewish people kept defaulting to the path of the Zealots. When Jesus read from Isaiah in his hometown and declared the year of the Lord’s favor but left off the line about God’s vengeance,[1] his hometown tried to kill him because they knew what he was saying. God’s favor was going to become available to all, and they were not okay with that. God was going to bring peace by reconciling everyone first to Himself and then to each other, and that meant nobody was going to pay for the crimes done against them.

For many of them (the Zealots for sure), the kingdom of God would arrive by taking the sword to those who hurt them. And that's what a Caesar or a Nero would do. That’s what happened in Jesus’ parable. That’s what Antipas did to those who displeased him. And this is the approach the Jewish people kept revisiting over and over. Even the non-Zealots seemed to keep rallying around the sword to solve their problems and usher in the Kingdom of God.

We've got good biblical reason to believe that this Zealot thread kept running through Jesus’ disciples no matter how often he taught and lived differently.

I’ve noted before that that Judas and Simon were both zealots. Judas had a nickname “Iscariot,” a nickname that seems to place him among the sicarii, one of the "dagger-men" of the Zealots who had committed to killing Roman soldiers whenever he could with his dagger that shared his nickname. I'm leaning more and more toward the idea that when we get to the last week in the life of Jesus, Judas was intending to be the spark that started the revolution.

Judas knew that if he went to the high priests, they would come for Jesus. Remember, the high priests are the Sadducees. They love Rome, and they have been trying to kill Jesus because Jesus is putting their status with Rome in jeopardy. At one point Caiaphas tells the Sanhedrin that it’s better to kill one person, Jesus, than to have them all killed.[2] Judas knows that the Sadducees’ private army of bodyguards will have no problem pulling a sword on Jesus. They had a reputation for doing that kind of thing to those who crossed the Sadducees.

It’s an odd collaboration. The Zealots hated the Sadducees because they were such compromisers. Clearly, Judas is just using them. The text doesn't say this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were Zealots hiding nearby, waiting for the fight to begin. What a shock it must have been when Peter - who brought a sword to a garden prayer time? - starts the fight and Jesus promptly stops it.

Let's fast forward to the trial where Herod does what Herod always did at Passover, which was to offer a released prisoner to the Jewish people. He gives them the option of Jesus the Christ or Jesus Barabbas. The crowd chooses Barabbas, who had been arrested because he had already engaged in violent insurrection.  They want their Zealot who knows how to fight on their terms.

I suspect part of the reason Jesus wept was because he knew what would happen when God’s people try to bring about the Kingdom of God at the edge of a sword. He warned Peter: “You live by it, you die by it.” Why are the Jewish people slaughtered and the Temple destroyed in AD 70? The Zealots keep pushing and pushing and pushing until Rome snapped.

So, full circle back to the parable. I think Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and he reminded them of what Herod was like, and how empires work. He will never be that kind of King, and his kingdom should never be that kind of Kingdom.

* * * * *

I've been thinking a lot this week about what principles we take away from this. If you recall, the Jewish people wrestled with three responses to the question, “What do we do with Rome?

• Compromise, embrace it, learn to love it (Sadducees and Herodians)

• ·Retreated and just focus on being holy (Essenes and Pharisees)

• ·Fight Rome with the weapons of Rome.  

Jesus has challenged all of these approaches throughout the course of his ministry.

• ·He doesn't retreat from the culture around him; instead he goes to the Gentiles (Samaritans and Romans).

• ·He doesn't embrace the culture; he embraces the people in the culture as individuals and calls them to follow him.

• ·He doesn't pick up a sword – unless it’s the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, which he seem him wielding in Revelation.

 Let’s go back to what characterized Rome and Herod Antipas.

• ·Rome destroyed those would not help them expand their empire and the Hellenism of the Greeks.

• ·Rome was violent and merciless to those who betrayed them.

• · Rome was all about the winners getting more winny and the losers getting more losery. 

 How is Jesus a different kind of King?

·Those outside the kingdom were not destroyed in the process of expanding the kingdom. They were literally still alive to have access to the Kingdom. Jesus just kept inviting himself to the home of the sinner, the Samaritan, the tax collector. He kept inviting people. The banquet table has enough seats for everybody.

• ·On the cross, he asks God to forgive those who crucified him rather than asking him to smite them. He will restore Peter, who might have betrayed him more than Judas when he called down curses and said, “I don’t know my own rabbi.” Okay, important trivia (?) When Jesus rose, the women at the grave were told to take the news “to the disciples and Peter.”[3] It’s only been three days. Why isn’t Peter just assumed to still be a disciple? Because he denied and cursed his rabbi. He was done. There was no coming back from that. When Jesus sees him again, where is he? Back to fishing. He was done. AND JESUS RESTORES HIM. This is not an earthly kingdom; this is a heavenly kingdom.

• ·Jesus was not about rewarding the competent and punishing the incompetent #peteronceagain. Remember the Parable of the Two Brothers (Prodigal Son). Remember the Parable of Workers working all day vs. one hour. Jesus is excited about giving everyone the spiritual spoils of the Kingdom, whether they are crushing it or floundering or lost like that sheep. Everybody sits at the banquet table. Surely there is reward in walking in the Path of Life as we harvest what we have planted, but God is not a stingy and petty God, turning his nose up at the Samaritan and tax collector and prodigal. He came to seek and to save the lost, after all. That’s what he loves to do.

 Let's see if we can make this practical for our situation today.

We are not living in a nation that brings a sword against followers of Jesus like Herod Antipas. We do, however, live in a culture that will at times challenge us on aspects of what we believe or how we believe we should live our faith. How do we respond to living in spiritually occupied territory of Babylon/Rome (to use Revelation’s imagery)?

I'm hearing rumbles in some circles that we might be looking at a time that is ripe for a second Civil War. It's often accompanied with the stated desire to get America back to Judeo/Christian roots even if it requires violence. That just doesn't sound like Jesus. That sounds like Judas.

But there's also a level to this that stops short of violence physical violence. I'm thinking now of emotional, verbal and maybe even spiritual violence. When we talk about the culture wars, we can mean one of two things.

•  We can mean that there is a clash anytime Christians live in spaces with non-Christians simply because we are going to value different things for different reasons,  and we are going to offer our worship and allegiance to different gods or idols. In that sense, yeah, there's going to be a war in the sense that there is conflict and tension. Legit. This has always been true.

• We can also use Culture Wars to mean it is time for us to get out there and fight fight fight – but…. it's not usually accompanied with language asking what it looks to fight like Jesus. It's usually much more pragmatic Zealotry, with a physical or symbolic peace by the sword in that the ends will justify the means if we aren’t careful. A public figure who aligns with Christians noted recently, in reference to the aforementioned culture wars, “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing…”

 But here's the reality. The means determine who we are in the end. If we fight like Rome and get our way, we'll just be Rome by another name. And if this is our hope, we will constantly be searching for peace and not finding peace because we didn't fight like Jesus as we pointed toward Jesus. The apostle Paul – who knew a thing or two about fighting battles in the wrong way - reminded us how to fight like Jesus, for Jesus.

 Finally, brothers and sisters, draw your strength and might from God. Put on the full armor of God to protect yourselves from the devil and his evil schemes. We’re not waging war against enemies of flesh and blood alone. No, this fight is against tyrants, against authorities, against supernatural powers and demon princes that slither in the darkness of this world, and against wicked spiritual armies that lurk about in heavenly places.

 And this is why you need to be head-to-toe in the full armor of God: so you can resist during these evil days and be fully prepared to hold your ground. Yes, stand—truth banded around your waist, righteousness as your chest plate, and feet protected in preparation to proclaim the good news of peace.  Don’t forget to raise the shield of faith above all else, so you will be able to extinguish flaming spears hurled at you from the wicked one. Take also the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Pray always. Pray in the Spirit. Pray about everything in every way you know how! And keeping all this in mind, prayon behalf of God’s people. Keep on praying feverishly, and be on the lookout until evil has been stayed.  (Ephesians 6:10-18)

 ________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Luke 4

[2] John 11:45-57

[3] Mark 16:7