Harmony #48: Healing a Man Born Blind (John 9:1-41)

Now as Jesus was passing by, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?” [1] Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,[2] but he was born blind[3] so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.

As I understand that last comment, Jesus is smacking down the idea that sickness must be a result of someone’s sin, and instead elevating the value of the sick person by viewing them as one in whom God’s glory rather than their sinfulness will be revealed.

We must perform the deeds of the one who sent me as long as it is daytime. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said this, he spat on the ground and made some mud with the saliva.[4] He smeared the mud on the blind man’s eyes and said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated “sent”). So the blind man went away and washed, and came back seeing.

I wouldn't overthink why Jesus did it this way. It meant something to the man and did not seem to surprise the people. Apparently, using saliva was a common medical approach to eye issues. What confounded the people was not how Jesus did it, but what it accomplished.

First side note: Jesus healed people in all kinds of ways: up close, at a distance; upon request or on no request; instantly or in stages. There is no need to try to discover a miraculous potion made of clay and spittle. 

Second side note: Jesus didn’t need to apply a known medicinal practice to this man’s eyes. He could have just healed him. This isn’t the first time Jesus has outwardly used a natural remedy while bringing about a supernatural result. As I see it, it’s okay to go to a doctor and pray for healing. These don't have to be contradictory things. Even if you think it’s just ‘going through the motions’, using medical help for illness does not reveal a lack of faith.

Then the neighbors and the people who had seen him previously as a beggar began saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some people said, “This is the man!” while others said, “No, but he looks like him.”

The man himself kept insisting, “I am the one!” So they asked him, “How then were you made to see?” He replied, “The man called Jesus made mud, smeared it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and was able to see.”

They said to him, “Where is that man?” He replied, “I don’t know.” They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees.  (Now the day on which Jesus made the mud and caused him to see was a Sabbath.) So the Pharisees asked him again how he had gained his sight. He replied, “He put mud on my eyes and I washed, and now I am able to see.”

Then some of the Pharisees[5] began to say, “This man is not from God, because he does not observe the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such miraculous signs?” Thus there was a division among them. So again they asked the man who used to be blind, “What do you say about him, since he caused you to see?”

“He is a prophet,” the man replied. Now the Jewish religious leaders refused to believe that he had really been blind and had gained his sight until at last they summoned the parents of the man who had become able to see. They asked the parents, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”

So his parents replied, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But we do not know how he is now able to see, nor do we know who caused him to see. Ask him, he is a mature adult. He will speak for himself.”

(His parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jewish religious leaders. For the Jewish leaders had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is a mature adult, ask him.”)

Then they summoned the man who used to be blind a second time and said to him, “Promise before God to tell the truth. We know that this man is a sinner.” He replied, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. I do know one thing—that although I was blind, now I can see.”[6]

Then they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he cause you to see?” He answered, “I told you already and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You people don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?” They heaped insults on him, saying, “You are his disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God has spoken to Moses! We do not know where this man comes from!”[7]

The man replied, “This is a remarkable thing, that you don’t know where he comes from, and yet he caused me to see! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will, God listens to him. Never before has anyone heard of someone causing a man born blind to see. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

They replied, “You were born completely in sinfulness, and yet you presume to teach us?” So they threw him out. [8]Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, so he found the man and said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man replied, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus told him, “You have seen him; he is the one speaking with you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “For judgment (a verdict) I have come into this world, so that those who do not see may gain their sight, and the ones who see may become blind.”  Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and asked him, “We are not blind too, are we?”[9] Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.”[10]

* * * * *

Let’s talk about this verdict of judgment, and blindness, and light.

When light comes into the world, it renders a verdict in the sense that it shows truth. I tore apart an old sofa last week. Before the light revealed what all had fallen between the cracks, I had no idea how much junk had accumulated in the frame. But then light rendered a verdict: a lot. That’s how light works. It shows us what is true, and then we have to decide what to do with that. It is inevitable: when light is introduced, it separates light from darkness. This is a principle as old as Genesis 1.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:3-4)

So how do we reconcile Jesus saying, “For judgment I have come into the world” with John writing, “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it, but to save it”? (John 3:17). By the same principle, the light is not a judgment in the sense of a punishment; it’s just that when light is introduced, it renders a verdict on reality.

Ephesians 5:13 “But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible…”

John 3:19-21  “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”[11]

The arrival of Jesus brought a light of truth the revealed the condition of humanity and the nature of God. The light that starts by revealing truth goes on to reveal what people will do with it (that’s the verdict): people either love truth or they don’t. It’s one reason non-violent Jesus can say in Matthew 11:25 and Matthew 10:34; "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." Those sound like fighting words, but they’re not: the sword is the Word of God whose truth pierces us to our souls (Hebrews 4:12).

A new kind of light is introduced, and it clarifies the chasm between spiritual light and spiritual darkness. Those who love the darkness of deception will be held responsible for why they rejected the truth. Here’s a good explanation for the judgment question from Ellicott’s Commentary:[12]

“The special form of the word rendered “judgment” in this place is used nowhere else by St. John, and indicates that…His coming was a bringing light into the darkness of…hearts, a testing of the false and the true…That light judged no one, and yet by it everyone was judged.” (Ellicott’s Commentary For English Readers)[13]

“As those are most blind who will not see, so their blindness is most dangerous who fancy they do see. No patients are managed with so much difficulty as those who… say they are well, and that nothing ails them. The sin of those that are self-confident remains… and therefore the power of their sin remains unbroken.” (Benson Commentary)

I was thinking of when I have had knee and shoulder surgeries done, or when I got my stent. I was broken and sick and needed healing. The doctors did not do Xrays and MRIs to bring condemnation but to bring clarity as to the nature of the problem. They were there to save me. Did what their ‘light’ revealed render a verdict? You bet. ‘That’ is torn; ‘that’ is not. ‘That’ is blocked; ‘that’ is not. That new knowledge didn’t make me more sick; it clarified just how sick I was – and what kind of treatment could make me well.

That’s how Jesus can say he came to save the world not condemn it, even while bringing truth that renders a verdict on the true nature of the world, humanity, and of Jesus himself. Light brings (an often uncomfortable) truth that is for our good and that is meant to save us; we have to decide what to do with the truth we have been given.

That’s the first point.

Second point: People are responsible for the light given to them. When the Bible tells us that not one person is righteous on their own[14], it’s referring to everyone everywhere, even those who have not had the light of the Gospel specifically presented to them. How is that fair?  Well, the author of Romans shed some light on this.

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus (Romans 2:12-16). 

Let’s walk through this one phrase at  time just so we have clarity. 

·  For when the Gentiles (those who don’t have the Law)

·  by nature (they have imago dei. There are moral and ethical requirements widely recognized and honored in people generally. It was a commonplace of rabbinic teaching that Abraham kept the laws of Sinai long before they were given.[15])

·  do the things contained in the law (they do right things)[16]

·  these, not having the written law, are a law unto themselves, (“Gentiles, though not given the Mosaic law, also have some knowledge of God’s law”[17] by the light and grace of God. It’s a moral code, fallen and incomplete though it may be.)[18]

·  who show the law written in their hearts, (by the same divine hand which wrote the commandments on the tables of stone) 

·  their conscience and their thoughts bearing witness, accusing or defending them ([19]“The way conscience operates is described as a process of accusation or defense by the thoughts of a person, the inner life being pictured as a kind of debating forum, so that at times one finds oneself exonerated at the bar of conscience, at other times convicted of wrong.”[20]  

Here is an example of how this works. A fourth century Roman emperor named Julian the Apostate (he was raised Christian and reverted to paganism) wrote “Against the Galilaeans,” which criticized Christianity and its Jewish foundation. At one point, he disparages the uniqueness of the Ten Commandments:

“What nation is there, I swear before the gods, which does not think that it ought to keep the commandments, excluding ‘Thou shalt not worship other gods’ and ‘Remember the Sabbath day’? Thus also penalties have been assigned to transgressors...” (Against the Galilaeans, 152D).[21]

Unwittingly, I think, Julian made Paul’s point in Romans: God has provided all with the ability to respond to a moral order that can be known at least to some degree. God, through general revelation of nature and conscience, has ensured that people know that there is good and evil, and that they are responsible to do good and not evil.  

The apostle hath explained what the light of nature is, and demonstrated that there is such a light existing. It is a revelation from God written originally on the heart or mind of man; consequently is a revelation common to all nations; and, so far as it goes, it agrees with the things written in the external revelation which God hath made to some nations. (Benson’s Commentary)

Even Gentiles, who had not the written law, had that within, which directed them what to do by the light of nature. Conscience is a witness, and first or last will bear witness…Conscience is a witness, and first or last will bear witness. As they kept or broke these natural laws and dictates, their consciences either acquitted or condemned them. (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary)

The point is not that those without divine revelations will escape the Day of Reckoning.  They will have to give an answer like everyone else for what they have done with what they were given. And, like all of us, they will not keep the dictates of the Law.

“Paul emphasized that all individuals will be judged on the basis of their response to the revelation they have received. Gentiles will not be condemned for failing to adhere to the stipulations of the law, which were unknown to them.  God will not judge Gentiles on the basis of the Jewish law, and the Jew will not be excused by the Gentiles’ failure to uphold the law… Furthermore, human conscience serves as grounds for condemnation because it establishes a framework of right and wrong and reflects the law written in their hearts”. (NKJV Evangelical Study Bible)[22]

People will not have to give an answer based on the light they did not receive; we will all give an answer for what we have done with the light we have been given. Those who have never seen a Bible can still know God’s revelation of himself in nature and in their consciences. They, too, have a light for which they will give an answer. All will be judged for their actions and motives, which are controlled by their consciences.[23] 

·    How are you responding internally to the light you have been given? If you are sitting in this church, the Bible is yours to read. How are you responding to the light Jesus has revealed to you? How are you responding to the person of Jesus as revealed in Scripture? What has it shown in your heart, soul, and mind, and how are you responding. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) How’s that going? Are you able to be honest, humble, surrendered, committed to dealing with what the light reveals?

·    What are you doing externally with the light of revelation you have been given? Is it changing the rhythms of life? Is it ordering your steps? Are you living like a different kind of person than you were before you had the truth? Has the truth set you free from the bondage of sin? Are you stepping into or hiding from the light?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] “Many in ancient times believed serious birth defects were the product of personal sin—thus the disciples’ question in verse 2.” (CBS Tony Evans Study Bible)

[2] (Acts 28:4) “The people of the island saw it hanging from his hand and said to each other, “A murderer, no doubt! Though he escaped the sea, justice will not permit him to live.”

[3] F. F. Bruce notes, "This does not mean that God deliberately caused the child to be born blind in order that, after many years, his glory should be displayed in the removal of the blindness; to think so would again be an aspersion on the character of God. It does mean that God overruled the disaster of the child's blindness so that, when the child grew to manhood, he might, by recovering his sight, see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and others, seeing this work of God, might turn to the true Light of the World.”

[4] “We know from the pages of Pliny, and Tacitus, and Suetonius, that the saliva jejuna was held to be a remedy in cases of blindness, and that the same remedy was used by the Jews is established by the writings of the Rabbis.” (Ellicott’s Commentary) 

[5] The Pharisaic school of Hillel permitted prayer for the sick on the Sabbath; the dominant Shammaite schoo didn’t. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible) 

[6] “Many people do not bear witness to Christ because they fear they will be asked questions they cannot answer…“That I don't know, but what I do know is this,” is foundational to witnessing one's faith to others.” (Orthodox Study Bible)

[7] “Critics sometimes insulted their opponents by refusing to name them (and)denying their importance.” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[8] “The man who had been physically blind had become a believer, for his spiritual eyes had also been opened. On the other hand, the Pharisees could see physically but were spiritually blind.”(Africa Bible Commentary)

[9] “Many ancient writers spoke of spiritual or moral blindness (see Isaiah 6:9 – 10; 42:18 – 19); some also spoke of those who were physically blind yet had great spiritual insight.” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[10] Paul makes a similar argument in Rom. 1:18–3:20.

[11] There are plenty of other ‘light’ verses, such as this one in 2 Corinthians 4:6  “ God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

[12] “Bringing a sword” is simply an observation that not all will accept the truth about Jesus, and disagreement over this issue will lead to conflict.

[13] “His coming would manifest the disposition and character of every man. The humble, teachable, and upright, though they were as much in the dark with respect to religion and the knowledge of divine things, as the blind man had been with respect to the light of the sun, should be greatly enlightened by his coming: whereas those, who in their own opinion were wise, and learned, and clear-sighted, should appear to be, what they really were, blind, that is…foolish.” (Benson Commentary)

[14] Romans 3:10

[15] Expositor’s Bible Commentary

[16] In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul deals with a disturbing situation in the Corinthian church: “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.” Seneca the Younger (another contemporary of Paul) wrote a play called Phaedra in which Phaedra desires her step-son, Hippolytus. Phaedra’s nurse counsels her: “I beg you, then, extinguish the flames of your incestuous love, a sin which the barbarians have yet to commit. The nomadic Getae do not practice incest, nor the inhospitable Taurians, nor the scattered Scythians. Expel this perversion from your mind.” (Paul and the Pagans, faith.edu)

[17] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament

[18] “Without individual conscience, there could be no public moral code. But we believe the main reference here to be to the public code; to the general consciousness and opinion of heathens that right and wrong are eternally different, and that judgment is to be accordingly hereafter…and as all pointing to a great manifestation of the truth of the principle at the Last Day.” (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)

[19] Expositor’s Bible Commentary

[20] Benson’s Commentary

[21] “Paul and the Pagans,” faith.edu

[22] “Heathen sinners shall be justly condemned; for though without the law, they have a substitute for it.” Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

[23] Africa Bible Commentary

The Story Of The Bible

In the beginning (or so ancient Near East literature reads), a god rose from primeval waters and birthed the universe. Who it was and how that was possible didn’t matter. It just happened. Then, that god faded mostly into obscurity, uncaring and uninvolved.

This cosmos was not a pleasant place. It was formless and void, unordered, birthed in the chaotic conflict of the Darkness and the Deep (if it had a beginning at all). Finally, the gods fought a long battle with the forces of chaos. Marduk and Baal battled with the monstrous Tiamat and Yam. Fortunately, the gods won. These gods began to ‘name’ things – which in the Ancient Near East was associated with creation. To them, something began to exist when it had an identity (captured in a name), not merely a form.

These early civilizations explained this cosmic battle with important imagery. Darkness, the Deep, the Sea, the desert wasteland - these were the homes of chaos, the places of Leviathin, Behemoth, Rahab, sea monsters, dragons, serpents, the wandering souls of the dead - even owls (!?)Important boundaries kept this disorder from overrunning order. Order was a sign that a god was near: the sun had an ordered schedule, for example, so there must be a god behind it - or maybe it was actually a god itself.

Well, the gods got tired and needy. They created humanity begrudgingly so people could serve the gods as slaves. Somebody had to feed and take care of the gods while they kept order. However, the gods only kept order in their realm – the sky above. They expected the humans to bring order to earthly chaos. So people built cities with walls to separate civilization from the wastelands; they channeled water; they used light to keep back the night.

They formed governments. They built sacred spaces with temples and gardens so the gods could come near and be fed and pampered. Their gods ‘inhabited’ the idols they made – which is why the people washed, fed, and even put the idols to bed. They tried court cases in front of idols that were literally enthroned. (The priests had to pull off some trickery with the food and the speech, but that, too, was, proper service to their god.)

These gods were not better than people, by the way. They were just stronger. They raised no moral bar. They made mistakes; they committed crimes. Any ideas of goodness, justice, love or mercy were, in the end, no greater than the people who thought about them. The people had to figure out what they thought those words even meant – and then they applied that standard to the gods. History records a sense of despair among the ancients: they hoped the gods would be just, wise, good, gracious and faithful; they hoped they would act in those ways. They often didn’t.

GOD’S REVELATION TO THE HEBREWS

The writers of the Bible grew up in this world. They used the images and ideas that formed their world to tell a new kind of story - a true story of the world -  that changed everything.

The general consensus is that Moses was either the writer or editor/compiler of the first 5 books of the Old Testament (perhaps he was a little of both). Moses was raised and trained by the Egyptians, and the children of Israel had been thoroughly immersed in the Ancient Near East worldview. They had a history that both overlapped and diverged geographically and spiritually from a shared beginning; it should be no surprise that they shared stories of similar events, but had very different things to say about them. Moses is the first of many biblical writers who will use the language, images and themes of shared stories and cultures to unveil the True History and True God of the world.

* * * * *

At the beginning of cosmic history , God began to create. When God identified himself to Moses as I AM, He was saying (among other things) that He is the one who causes things to be. He separated things in the void (established boundaries – see the first three days of creation in Genesis 1); his spirit “fluttered over the water like a dove” (or so the rabbis translated it).

He did not arise from the Darkness and the Deep; He made them and then ordered them. This God did not do battle with monstrous Titans of Chaos who threatened to overwhelm them. They weren’t a challenge. They were his servants. They were nothing compared to him. He named things that were formless (he established their identity and purpose – see the last three days of the creation account).

He raised humanity from the dirt (adam-‘earth’) and yet he designed them to co-create with him (eve – ‘to give life’). People had value because God created them to carry the image of  God. In the ancient world it was rulers, emperors, and pharaohs who were thought to be in the image of God; Genesis claimed we are all royalty. God created humanity to enjoy this creation and their Creator, not feed and pamper a needy god. This God, Yahweh, was the one true God – he didn’t need any help.

People were icons and representatives of God and royal, priestly stewards of His creation - honored positions in any Ancient Near East culture. I AM means more than just ‘the one who caused things to be’; it suggests he is a God who enters into relationships. Relationships, too, are a thing he creates. This was not an impersonal, aloof God who got things started and then left. Then God “rests.” His work is finished. But this was not a passive rest like we tend to think of it; this was the rest of a king moving in to rule and reign in a Kingdom that was good.

God makes his sacred space - a temple if you will - in a garden in the land of Eden. It was everything people should have wanted: an ordered and complete world in a space where God “walked and talked with them.” He did not inhabit it in the form of an idol; the Psalmist would later note that he was enthroned on (inhabited) the praises of his people (Psalm 22:3). God made a covenant with Adam: be faithful, and you will flourish in this good world. Be unfaithful, and you will reap toil and pain from the chaos you sow.

Nothing in the space was off limits except for one thing: a Tree of the Knowledge Of Good and Evil. It’s the knowledge of those who have the right to declare good order and right boundaries for the world. This tree was not inherently bad; after all, it was part of God’s good creation. Clearly God had this knowledge. God just said, “It’s not meant for you. This is my territory. If you claim ownership of that, chaos will follow, because the boundaries of good and evil are not yours to decide.”

Chaos, evil, a “beast of the field,” slithered into the garden, a crafty tester, challenging order with disorder. Eve saw (vaiyar) something beautiful (tob) but forbidden, and she and Adam welcomed it. Instead of having dominion over the animals, they gave up their dominion to the animal. It did not go well. First, they hid in shame. Then, in the first act of violence recorded in the Bible, a beast died to cover their beastly shame. The wages of chaos is death. We’ve known this since the beginning.

God unveiled the path they had chosen. They were given the image of God; they had chosen to associate with the a beast. Now all that was made good would be haunted by pain, chaos, and disorder. Humanity and the beasts - stewards of order and creatures of chaos — will painfully struggle, over an over. Soon, the Bible first uses a word we translate as “sin” to describe how Cain had chaos and disorder “crouching at the door” of his life. Adam’s legacy continues.

• To Adam, God said,: “What have you done?”

• Adam responded: “The woman you gave me gave me the apple.”

• For Adam, the earth was cursed; he would now struggle to bring life from it.

• To Cain, God said,: “ Where is Abel your brother?”

• Cain said:  “Am I my brother’s keeper? That’s your job.”

• For Cain, the earth was also cursed; he would wander, because he wouldn’t be able to bring life from it at all.

The next several chapters of Genesis follow this pattern of wandering and struggling. People head “east of Eden,” a direction that we see over and over to represent a direction that takes people away from God. Everybody keeps making things worse. When people build cities to put walls between the dark deserts of chaos, the cities are worse than the barrens. The serpent bites their heal and causes them to stumble even as they bruise its head and chase it away. Over and over.

If the behavior of Adam and Eve is any indication of how humanity would choose to live, their descendants may well have welcomed these sin serpents before realizing what they were. But….they probably knew. Surely the story had been told. They may have found the same lies intriguing and seductive — until they didn’t. Echoes of the Deep resided in them. Chaos was still in their hearts. Sin walked over the doorway and into the house.

All of the ancients recorded a flood in which the gods judged the unboundaried people by removing boundaries around them: the people wanted to determine their own boundaries — which was none — so the gods removed boundaries and gave them a world in which they got what they thought they wanted. However, a select group was set aside to try again.

The Hebrew writers agree with the basic plot line — it was a shared historical event, after all — but they record more. Yahweh is God; he warned and waited for decades. After God washed the disorder and sin from the world (a symbolic return to the point in the creation narrative in Genesis 1:9 where there was no dry land), we read a second creation narrative: the winds blew over the earth and the waters subsided (much like the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters).

God set up a new Eden, with a new Adam (Noah) who had been saved in an ark. There was a reminder that beasts would fear them, that order (such as the seasons) would continue. They were to continue the “be fruitful and multiply” mandate given to Adam and Eve. This was all surrounded by a new covenant for all of humanity. Eden 2.0.

Noah did not improve on Adam’s failure. He and his children promptly brought more disorder and sin. His descendants moved even further East - to Babel (Babylon), where they soon pursued their own version of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, building a tower to “make a name for themselves” instead of allowing God to name them, identity them, and order the lives of his image bearing stewards (Genesis 11).

So God steps in again to reorder. The Table of Nations (Genesis 10) records the outcome: tribes, nations and tongues are separated like never before. Moses recorded, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance (much like the Prodigal Son in one of Jesus’ parables), when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (he gave them over to the gods they wanted). But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” (Deuteronomy 32:8-9)

In other words, Yahweh sentenced the nations and their gods to each other. If they wanted other gods to lead them, God would give them what they wanted. But unlike the Mesopotamian gods, he would not stay aloof; this God would continuously descend to His creation to serve them and create something new yet again.  Then, in the very next chapter, He calls Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), effectively starting over in creating an earthly human family for Himself.” Abraham would be fruitful and multiply by being a “father many nations”. He sent him to the Jordan Valley, which was watered “like the garden of the Lord.” Eden 3.0

God made a covenant with Abraham that all of the world would be blessed through Abraham’s descendants. In a classic ANE suzerain ritual that a king made with a vassal, Abraham slaughtered animals so he, the vassal, could walk between dismembered parts as a reminder that covenant breakers would suffer the same fate. But in this case God’s spirit (a blazing torch lighting a deep darkness), not Abraham, moved through the middle of these pieces, in essence saying, “If either one of us breaks this treaty, may it be done to me and me alone what was done to these animals.”

It was unheard of for the stronger party to take upon himself the weight of the penalty. Abraham was good with that kind of unconditional promise. But while God would never break it, Abraham and his descendants could. They were tasked with some basic conditions: be inwardly blameless  and outwardly circumcised (a common custom that was a mark of initiation). Being blameless was bound to be too much. A few of Abraham’s children, the children of his disobedience, head East yet again.

Fast forward to Egypt, where captivity and slavery threaten to overwhelm them in new kind of flood. The Bible uses words of chaos again: the Egyptians are “sea monsters” and “Leviathan,” (Psalm 74); when Aaron and Pharaoh’s magicians have a battle pitting their gods against each other, their staffs become tannin (dragons); the plagues, a methodical smackdown of the Egyptian gods, end with a deep darkness that threatens to visit death on every family in Egypt. But God provides another ‘ark’ for anyone who chose to use it, another way out: the blood of a precious lamb over the doorposts of the house, a lamb whose costly death and spilled blood protected them as Death passed them by.

The spirit of God moves over yet more water (the Red Sea) as Yahweh leads His people out of Egypt – a pillar of both cloud and fire, separated like the first day of creation, gives light to the Israelites and darkness to the Egyptians. He feeds them with manna, which is described as looking the same way as precious stones in the Eden (the only two references in the Old Testament). In the desert, the Creator God of Order and Life, Dispeller of Chaos, begins to re-create again.

God made another covenant with Moses, a leader God had spared in another ark when he was a baby and  raised up to take his people to their Promised Land. This covenant follows the pattern of suzerain (king) covenants once again, including the calling of witnesses. In this case, instead of calling the gods as witness as a Mesopatamian king would have done, God calls “the heaven and earth” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

This covenant brought order to practically every aspect of the lives of his people, from the kinds of clothes they wore to the meals they cooked to their sex lives to how they harvested. His glory would be seen in the right ordering of the world he had made — and that included the people. This was good news. The gods of their neighbors never bothered to tell their worshipers about what offended or pleased them. Yahweh, however, made it very clear. God and God’s will could be known.

So, Moses and the people took the 10 foundational Commandments from God and wrote books about out what they would do to bring covenant justice and order to their nation and their lives to reveal His goodness to the world.  These Books Of The Law were the kind of ‘law text’ found throughout the ancient world. These were wise guidelines, commentary to accompany the primary text on stone tablets — “wisdom literature” if you will, the kind that would guide Solomon as he made decisions in unexpected ways.

But it was more than that. Unlike their neighbors, the Jewish people did not have to guess what guidelines would please the gods. Yahweh told them. These wise laws texts set the standard for covenant life and set the limits of lex taliones punishment (the punishments showed the limits of retributive justice). These laws also practiced provisions of mercy, which typically took the form of a substitutionary atonement for sin, such as a fine.

In other words, the people knew what a crime deserved, but they also knew that their just God - who was also compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love — desired that they do justice while loving mercy. They built a tabernacle (a mobile temple) with imagery that re-created Eden, down to an entrance facing toward the east and armed priests guarding the door (like the cherubim in Eden), perhaps as a reminder that those who enter the tabernacle are leaving the land of the lost and entering the garden of life. In the middle was yet another ark.

Once again, animals died to cover the shame and guilt of their sin. This was not a frivolous or blood-thirsty act. It was the deepest act of penance. An animal was life. It was wealth. It was status and power. This was an act of humility that reminded them that the wages of sin is death. In another act that paved the way for what God will provide through Jesus, there were times a scapegoat, heaped symbolically with their sins, was sent away from the people so that they could begin anew without the weight of their sins haunting them.

But the law and order meant to bring life brought judgment and sorrow. These covenant people kept doing non-covenant things, and if they wanted to live under the blessing and protection of God, there was a covenant. On their way to the new Eden of the Promised Land, the serpent stayed at their heel literally and spiritually. When fiery serpents ravaged the people after a particularly bad act of rebellion, surely they remembered their history and understood this message. Moses made an image of this curse that he “lifted up” on a pole so that those who turned their eyes toward it could be healed. Think of that as foreshadowing.

The entire generation of people set free from Egypt never made it to the Promised Land. Moses himself never made it to the Promised Land because he broke God’s boundaries. Chaos is a hard habit to break. It took new people, with a new honor of  God and appreciation of covenant, to be entrusted with the care of the new land of promise – Eden 4.0.

That went bad, too. God had warned Moses, "You are about to lie down with your fathers; and this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going, and will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.” (Deuteronomy 31:16)

In their now chaotic new Eden, God gave them judges, heroes that would lead them – but the people still ended up ‘doing what was right in their own eyes’, language that echoes what happened in Eden and at Babel. The book of Judges is a series of episodes that just play on repeat: worship other gods, do terrible sins, welcome chaos into your land, get ruled by other kings who serve other gods… but God in his mercy would send his Spirit to move over the troubled chaos of his people and raise up a new judge, a deliverer. Repeat.

The people eventually begged for a king, one with flesh like everybody else had. Maybe that was their problem. So, God gave them kings. He established boundaries for them and their kingdom, because He is a god of order. He sent His Spirit to aid them.

Their first king broke the boundaries quickly. It wasn’t that Saul didn’t know. He ‘did what was right in his own eyes’ to ‘make a name for himself’ by deciding right and wrong  on his terms. God’s prophet, Samuel, said to Saul, “You are not a man after God’s own heart.”  Saul still loved chaos and rejected order, and God does not.

The second king, David, was “a man after God’s own heart” — at least when he was installed as king.  He talked about arrogant men who were like “beasts.”  Yet he, too, gave into the sin and broke the boundaries around his life. Like Eve, he saw (vaiyar) something beautiful (tob) but forbidden - Bathsheba - and took her. His legacy left a trail of chaos.

David thought some men were beasts; his son Solomon wrote, “Concerning the sons of men, ‘God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.’” Solomon even built a new sacred space, a new Eden with a new Temple. But he sold his soul to pagan nations for a yearly 666 talents of silver, the bribe seductive enough to cause the wisest man on earth to abuse his power, love the wealth of the world, and turn from God.

Under Solomon, the temple would be defiled throughout its existence before it was destroyed by invaders when God took the kingdom from yet another who followed his own heart instead of God’s. Still, God, who is rich in mercy, had made yet another covenant. He had told David that it was through David and his descendants that a Messiah would come and establish a kingdom that would endure forever — an Eden that would never end. Yes, sin has its consequences, but it does not control the plans of God.

Bad years followed. Yahweh, whose “name was to be made great in all the earth” by his covenant people, had his name smeared and dishonored over and over again. The kingdom divided. Eventually God’s people were sent east into nations whose gods they had followed. The “formless and void” of Genesis 1 (tohu wahobu)  — is repeated only once in the Old Testament, and it is here. When Babylon destroyed Judah, Jeremiah wrote, “I looked on the earth, and it was tohu wahobu” (Jeremiah 4).

God did not send the chaos of the Deep to destroy them; what hit them was the Leviathan of Assyria, the behemoth of Babylon, the tannin (dragon) of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 51). They would take them to the home of  kings and gods (such as the Princes of Persia and Greece mentioned in the book of Daniel) that they had chosen over their God and King. Treason has never been treated lightly. Yet Daniel is at peace among the beasts, both literal and figurative. His friends are not forsaken in the fire. God is near.

The prophets had warned them.

• Daniel saw beast after beast, chaos creatures arising out of watery darkness, coming after God’s people (Daniel 7)

• Ezekiel had warned of “four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence… Those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” (14:21; 34:18)

• Jeremiah wrote, ”They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear My words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My covenant which I made with their fathers." (Jeremiah 9:26; 11:10)

• “The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.” (Isaiah 24:5)

That is not good news. But, as we have seen over and over, the human cycle of sin and rebellion was not matched by God’s withdrawal. Since Yahweh was faithful, the prophets — the speakers for Yahweh - had always promised hope.

As God’s Spirit moved the prophets, they said that — shockingly - God’s glory was still with those exiles in the East, and that when it returned there would be a new revelation — greater than God’s appearance to Moses – on another holy mountain. A redeemer was coming, a Savior, one in whom chaos would be defeated and order would once again return. This messiah would bring freedom, life, blessing, joy, and peace as a result of a new covenant He offered.

• “Before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven…an anointed one, a prince… shall make a strong covenant with many… and he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.” (Daniel 9; Daniel 7)

• “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” (Jeremiah 31: 31)

• He will “bring good news to the poor… bind up the brokenhearted…proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound… proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…” (Isaiah 61:1-2)

• The beasts, dragons and owls will honor him. (Isaiah 43:20)

• He would bear our grief and carried our sorrows as he would be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; through his chastisement we would gain peace, and with his wounds we would healed.  (Isaiah 53)

• “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace… He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)

This person arrives to offer a new and final covenant that fixes everything that was broken, fulfills the Law and the Prophets, and takes all the threads of the story and weaves them together into one unified picture: Jesus the Christ, the perfect God and perfect man; the Creator manifesting in His creation; the Lawgiver become the Lawkeeper; the Covenant Keeper taking the place of the Covenant Breaker; the Lord in whom there is no Chaos, Darkness, Death or Sin taking all of them upon himself and displaying His triumphant power so that we know, once and for all, that we do not have to fear them.

Going back to Genesis…

• In language taking us back to Genesis 1, the Spirit of God moves over Mary, bringing life where there was no life, making her womb a temporary sacred space, a garden from which a River of Life will flow to water the world.

• He is the God of the First Creation who now brings the New Creation.

• He walked on water and commanded the Deep.

• God’s spirit fluttered like a dove in the beginning of all things; God’s spirit descends like a dove on Jesus.

• His Holy Spirit would descend at Pentecost, showing it was possible for every tribe, nation and tongue to be united by the gospel and under the lordship of Christ (lest there be any confusion, the list of nations in Acts 2 matches the Table of Nations in Genesis 10).

Going back to ADAM…

• Jesus is the new and better Adam.

• Fallen humanity headed “east’” over and over; Jesus draws wise men back from the “east” from the moment he was born.

• In his temptation in the desert, He is “cast out” (like Adam and like Cain) into the wilderness with the “wild beasts,” and he takes dominion – not just over the beasts of the field, but the Beasts of John’s upcoming apocalypse.

• Eventually, he will make a new heaven and new earth, turning the entire world into his sacred space. The curse from Eden will be reversed: “They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” (Isaiah 65)

Going back to Noah…

• He is the Ark that preserves us when the Deep threatens to overwhelm us. In fact, Paul calls the death of Jesus hilasterion - the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant.

• The command to be fruitful and multiply in the covenants with Adam and Noah is now a spiritual one: “Go and make disciples; bear the fruit of the Spirit.”

Going back to Abraham….

• He is the God who becomes the torn penalty for Abraham’s (and our) broken covenant.

• He is the blessing for the world promised through Abraham.

Going back to Moses….

• He is the eternal Passover Lamb, under whose blood eternal death has no power.

• He is the final and perfect sacrifice that silences the altars of the Mosaic Law.

• He is the substitutionary atonement not just for most sins, but for all sins. Like God said in Deuteronomy, the heavens and earth bore witness to the price he paid on behalf of the covenant breakers, with darkness covering the land (Matthew 27:45) and the earth shaking (Matthew 27:51-52).1313

• He is “lifted up” on the cross like the bronze serpent in the desert to bring healing and life.

• He met with his people on a holy mountain in power and glorious majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17), the dawning of the day hinted at by the prophetic lamp in the darkness.

• To those who overcome, he will give a new kind of manna (Revelation 2:17).

Going back to David and Solomon….

• He is the king who literally has God’s heart.

• He is the True Temple – who makes his dwelling place in us so that we become the temple of God.

Going back to the Old Testament prophets…

• He was the Messiah who could offer a lasting deliverance not from bondage to people but from chaos and destruction of sin and death.

• He brought order into a disordered and broken world: healing the sick, casting out demons, bringing the dead to life, trading beauty for ashes.

• He is not merely a light in the darkness; He is the Day Star, the Light Bringer, rising to make us covenant keepers in our new covenant hearts.

ON THE CROSS

• Christ the Victorious One established his domination over the power of sin and death. Through the power of agape love, God’s full glory is revealed. Satan and his evil chaos are defeated; even death itself does not have the last word. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and there is nothing that can stop him.  He ‘disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them,’ delivering us from the power of “this present evil age.”

• Jesus the Lamb makes the final sacrifice to pay the cost for our sin by giving his life as a ransom for those held hostage by sin, paying the penalty for the covenant-breaking spiritual descendants of Abraham. Jesus, the final scapegoat and sacrifice under the covenant with Moses, has borne our sins far away from us, inaugurated a New Covenant, and spiritually ‘sprinkled us with his blood’ as a means of sealing us into this new covenant. Through the cross, God cleanses us and prepares us for holy fellowship with God.

• Jesus, the Perfect Human, not only offered all of humanity a reconciliation with God by demonstrating how to ‘walk with God’ in ways that Adam could not sustain, but also demonstrated the model by which we are to live: laying down our lives, motivated by agape love, for God’s glory and for the good of those around us.  From the death of the Second Adam, a new humanity emerges, one shown by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as the kind of image bearers God intends. Now, we get to live out what has been accomplished by Jesus in this ministry of reconciliation.

• Jesus showed that God identifies with and understands all the abused, the powerless, the ones who suffer injustice, those for who feel shamed, despised and rejected. His humiliation and suffering on the cross was the means by which the shamed and suffering can be led from their captivity in spiritual Egypt and into the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God, a place flowing with the milk and honey of peace, dignity, and restoration.

Harmony 47: Who Is Your Father? (John 8:30-59)

Then Jesus said to those Judeans who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”[1] “We are descendants of Abraham,” they replied, “and have never been anyone’s slaves![2] How can you say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, everyone who practices[3] sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the family forever, but the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be really, truly free. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants.

“But you want to kill me, because my teaching makes no progress among/inside you. I am telling you the things I have seen while with the Father; as for you, you are following  the advice of your Father!” They answered him, “Abraham is our father!”

Jesus replied, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would be doing the deeds of Abraham. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do this! You people are doing the deeds of your father.”

Then they said to Jesus, “We were not born as a result of immorality [physically][4]! We have only one Father, God himself [spiritually].”

Jesus replied, “You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires. He was a murderer from the beginning,[5] and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I am telling you the truth, you do not believe me.

Who among you can prove me guilty of any sin/falsehood? If I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? The one who belongs to God listens and responds to God’s words. You don’t listen and respond, because you don’t belong to God...”

“The one who glorifies me is my Father, about whom you people say, ‘He is our God.’ Yet you do not recognize him, but I know him.[6] If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I obey his teaching. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, and he saw it and was glad.”[7]

Then the Judeans replied, “You are not yet fifty years old! Have you seen Abraham?”  Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, before Abraham came into existence, I am![8]” Then they picked up stones to throw at him,[9] but Jesus hid himself and went out from the temple area.

* * * * *

Let’s talk about family resemblances.

“ A new study suggests that the longer we are with someone, the more similarities in appearance grow. Researchers set out to investigate why couples often tend to resemble one another. They asked 11 male and 11 female participants to judge the age, attractiveness and personality traits of 160 real-life married couples. Photographs of husbands and wives were viewed separately, so the participants didn't know who was married to whom.

The test participants rated men and woman who were actual couples as looking alike and having similar personalities. Also, the longer the couples had been together, the greater the perceived similarities. The researchers speculate that the sharing of experiences might affect how couples look.”(Livescience.com)

Apparently whom we spend our time with matters.  It changes us somehow: we smile at the same things, and get similar smile lines; we respond emotionally and spiritually, we eat the same. It is more than physical, but it somehow translates into a physical similarity. Who we are with and where we are shapes us in ways that become obvious to those around us.

• If you have a job working outside vs. inside, your skin will show it.  

• If you grow up in a family that likes hunting and fishing vs. participating in the arts vs. gardening vs. reading and studying, you will have a different vocabulary, different skill set, different kinds of knowledge about the world.

• We know whose ‘team children’ we are by the logos we wear J

• The emotions you feel when seeing a nation’s flag are shaped profoundly by where and with whom you grew up.

Those are all practical. We know how it works. Proverbs 13:20 takes a bigger picture perspective:

 “He who walks with the wise will be wise.”

Plenty of other Proverbs give the flip-side warning: people who walk with fools will be fools. The sharing of experiences and priorities, the sharing of an environment shapes us sometimes in obvious ways, and other times in more subtle ways, but it always shapes us. We read in Matthew 11 that at one point, when Jesus got tired of fielding all kinds of silly, incoherent criticisms about himself, he said, 

“Wisdom is justified by her children (shown to be righteous by what it produces).”

We use the phrase “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree” to express a similar idea.  Things begat similar things.  Biologically, it is called the Law of Biogenesis.  Wikiquotes explains it this way:

“A child grows up to be very similar to its parents in the way they act and in their physical abilities.”

Children of God will bear a family resemblance. It will be obvious. The shared experiences/priorities/influences effected who they were. The disciple apples don’t fall far from the Jesus tree. Let’s jump back a couple centuries earlier.  To the Jewish people, the idea that it could be obvious when someone had spent time in the presence of God was not new.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant (something pushed out, like rays or horns) because he had spoken with the LORD.  When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 

But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them.  Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. 

But whenever he entered the LORD's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD. (Exodus 34:29 – 35)

For Moses, one of the results of truly being in the presence of God, of truly spending time with God, or really being in the presence of God, was that people noticed that he do not come away from that encounter in the same way he went in.

For the people around Moses, it was blinding. A sharing of experiences with God changed his physical appearance. When you were in the presence of God in that way in the Old Testament, your body was transformed. You looked different.

For Peter and John, it was not so physically overpowering, but was every bit as miraculous and obvious. “These men have been with Jesus.” For Peter and John, a sharing of experiences changed their character. When you were in the presence of God, in this case Jesus, your soul was changed. Your spirit was transformed. It was Jesus’ way of reminding us that there is a spiritual Law of Biogenesis at work in His Kingdom.

* * * * *

From Barna recently:

23% of young non-Christians and 22% of young Christians said "Christianity is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity in today's society no longer looks like Jesus."

Now, Barna points out that sometimes people think this because they have a false view of Jesus, so their perspective is skewed. But often they have a pretty good idea of who Jesus was, and what He taught, and how He lived, and they have this expectation that if Jesus really changes peoples lives like his followers claim, they there ought to be a lot of people who are different than they were before.  They know about apples, and they know about trees.

They keep looking around for people who have spent time with Jesus…and they are having trouble finding them.

This doesn’t mean the experiences we immerse ourselves in and the people we have surrounded ourselves with have not effected how we look and who we are. Surely our apple is close to the tree – buuuuut it’s just a different tree then we think. Maybe something is being justified by us; it’s just not Wisdom.

If you spend enough time around me, you will :

• realize that I have spent time with Jim Gaffigan and Brian Reagan. “Say 8!” “The big yellow one is the sun!” “Well, I probably should say hello.” 

• see that I know my way around the grammar of English. Well, I was an English Ed major. I can use their, there, and they’re correctly.

• know that I have read Tolkien and Lewis because I quote them and I’ll shout things like, “But that day is not today!” “And they call it a mine!”

• You can read the footnotes to these sermons and see who and what molds me.

When you see me, you see where I’ve been and whom I know. That man has been with Buckeye fans. That man has heard way too many dad jokes. That man got a degree that certified him to say to hapless students, “I know you CAN go to the bathroom.” 

I wonder how many times I have been somewhere, and the thought that crosses people’s minds is, “This man has been with Jesus.”

• Does my wife say that?  She knows I was an English major; she put me through college.  She knows I like Brian Reagan, because we have spent time together watching You Tube clips. But does she know I have been with Jesus? Who would your spouse say you have been spending time with?

• What do my kids say?  They know I can coach basketball; I’ve spent a lot of time and energy doing that. They know I spend time with the NCAA football on Saturdays and Lebron James’ games during the winter. They know I have been with church people. Do they know I’ve been with Jesus? Who would your kids say you have been spending time with?

• What do our friends say?

• What do our teammates or classmates say?

Whom have we been with? Is it obvious? Whose children are we? When Jesus called out the crowd in this passage, he pinpointed what showed whose children they really were because of their denial of truth and propensity for violence. We will see this unfold as we continue to go through the gospels. I want to focus this morning on what it looks like when God is our Father. An exhaustive list is too much for a portion of one sermon. The following points came to mind. Feel free to expand on this list in Message+ or in your own private study of Scripture.

When God is our Father, we…

• bear the Fruit of the Spirit: the apples of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control fall near the Jesus tree. (Galatians 5:22-23).

• share Jesus’ reputation as a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19;Luke 7:34). It’s funny: that label was intended as an insult. Turns out it wasn’t. There was something about Jesus that drew people far from God close to him.

• bring the Great Physician’s healing to the sick around us (Luke 5:31-32). We bring a message of spiritual health and hope as we pray and work for the physical, mental, and emotional health of others. We are designed to be the spiritual first responders in a sin-sick world. Do the sin-sick experience us that way?

• bring gospel hope to the poor, the broken-hearted, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed (Luke 4:18; Mark 9:41). These are all things Jesus said about himself. The weary, the weak, those suffering under injustice: they need hope. We are intended to take it on behalf of Jesus.

• speak truth and reject lies (see today’s passage).  A passionate love of truth must characterize followers of Jesus. This isn’t just about issues of faith; it’s everything. A little yeast gets into the whole loaf. If we prove ourselves unreliable narrators in one area, it’s inevitable it will call into question our ability to know and speak truth in other areas. This is why we don’t spread rumors or unfounded conspiracies. This is why we triple check our news sources. This is why we refuse to live in news bubbles that only tell us one side of a story. This is why we take time to practice introspection and ask God to help us see ourselves as God sees us.

• Integrate orthodoxy (right belief), orthopraxy (right actions) and orthopathy (right emotions).[10]  We live what we say we believe, guided by righteous passions of our heart. And when any of these are out of sync, we pray that God does gospel work to bring us into alignment. We are not afraid to confront hypocrisy and compromise in ourselves and others (see the sermon on the Pharisees’ hypocrisy).

• take time to “see” people (“When Jesus saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36) That word implies more than just ‘glanced.’ He SAW them. He understood them. He was attuned with them. Ambassadors for Jesus take the time to see and understand the crowds around us.

• are in tune with God’s mission in the world: spread the gospel in word and deed – the “ministry of reconciliation” in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 that also looks after the needy (“orphans and widows”) in James 1:27. We take a cup of water and of Living Water. We take bread and the Bread of Life. We give practical hope and offer spiritual hope. We give someone a fish and teach them to fish in our role as Fishers of Men.

• knock down cultural barriers that separate or divide God’s people (Ephesians 2:11-22) and created hierarchies of value that result in judgment or favoritism: ethnicity, wealth, sex, social status – these all show up in the New Testament as things the early church had to church has to address. What about who you vote for, vaccination status, how your kids are schooled, level of education… there are so many things that seek to divide our fellowship in Christ.

• defend justice and mercy (Micah 6:8) God didn’t want his people to be slow to address injustice in their society. In fact, it was really important. Read all of the prophets if you have any questions about this. And yet all those texts are saturated with mercy. Judgment can stop a bad thing from happening, but it’s the kindness of God that leads people to genuine repentance (Romans 2:4).

• do everything from a foundation of love (1 Corinthians 13). Love God, and love other as Jesus has loved you (John 13:34-35).

________________________________________________________________________________

[1] It was a maxim of the Jews, "That no man was free, but he who exercised himself in the meditation of the law." (Adam Clarke)

[2] False. “‘Never in bondage to any man’? Then what about Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Syria? Was there not a Roman garrison looking down from the castle into the very Temple courts where this boastful falsehood was uttered?” (MacLaren’s Expositions)

[3] “Continues to commit sin” is not a reference to an individual act of sin, but a pattern. (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).

[4] Perhaps a dig at what they believed to be the circumstances of Jesus’ birth?

[5] This was the sentiment of the Jews. In Sohar Kadash, the wicked are called, "The children of the old serpent, who slew Adam and all his descendants." (Adam Clarke)

[6] “And ye have not recognized Him; but I know Him, the latter clause referring to His immediate essential knowledge of the Father.” (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)

[7] “ “See Hebrews 11:13; "These all died in faith, not having received (obtained the fulfillment of) the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them," etc. Though Abraham was not permitted to live to see the times of the Messiah, yet he was permitted to have a prophetic view of him, and also of the design of his coming.” (Barne’s Notes on the Bible).

[8] See Exodus 3:14. “The idea expressed by the name is, as already explained, that of real, perfect, unconditioned, independent existence.” (Pulpit Commentary)

[9] “It appears that the Jews understood him as asserting his Godhead and, supposing him to be a blasphemer, they proceeded to stone him, according to the law. Leviticus 24:16.” (Adam Clarke)

[10] For more on each of these, see “Faith Is More than a Feeling, but Not Less.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/april/tish-harrison-warren-faith-orthodoxy-orthopathy-discipled.html

Harmony #46: The Meeting of Misery and Mercy[1] (John 7-8:12)

Jesus moves around the Galilean countryside to avoid Judea, because there were Jews there who wanted to kill him. His brothers try to convince him to do a bunch of public miracle, and Jesus declines. His brothers leave for the Festival of Booths, and eventually Jesus slips in. When he gets there, the Jewish leaders are looking for him and the crowds are divided about who he is. Jesus eventually heads to the Temple (Sadducee territory) and starts to preach. The people are amazed at his ability. Jesus say,

I do not claim ownership of My words; they are a gift from the One who sent Me. If anyone is willing to act according to His purposes and is open to hearing truth, he will know the source of My teaching. Does it come from God or from Me?  If a man speaks his own words, constantly quoting himself, he is after adulation. But I chase only after glory for the One who sent Me. My intention is authentic and true. You’ll find no wrong motives in Me… (7: 16-18)

The people are like: I think this is the guy they want to kill, but nobody is challenging him. Do they think he really is the Messiah? But, he’s from Galilee so….maybe not.

You think you know Me and where I have come from, but I have not come here on My own. I have been sent by the One who embodies truth. You do not know Him.  I know Him because I came from Him. He has sent Me. Some were trying to seize Him because of His words, but no one laid as much as a finger on Him—His time had not yet arrived.  (7: 28-30)

Meanwhile, some of the crowd was thinking he might be the Messiah. So the Pharisees and temple authorities sent officers (Roman-backed muscle) to arrest Jesus. They don’t. We will see why in minute. On the last day of the festival, Jesus speaks again.

If any of you is thirsty, come to Me and drink. If you believe in Me, rivers of living water will flow from within you [a reference to Isaiah 41]  Jesus was referring to the realities of life in the Spirit made available to everyone who believes in Him. But the Spirit had not yet arrived because Jesus had not been glorified…  (7:37-39)

Rumors spread. Some want to arrest him, but no one does. The officers who failed to arrest him say,

We listened to Him. Never has a man spoken like this man. (7:46)

The Pharisees were like, “You are stupid, and this is why we are under God’s curse. (7:49) But Nicodemus (that Nicodemus) said,

Does our law condemn someone without first giving him a fair hearing and learning something about him? (7:51)

 Cue the episode with the woman caught in adultery, which in this context definitely reads like a set-up to find a way to condemn Jesus.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.  He awoke early in the morning to return to the temple. When He arrived, the people surrounded Him, so He sat down and began to teach them. While He was teaching, the scribes and Pharisees brought in a woman who was caught in the act of adultery; and they stood her before Jesus.

The Pharisees said, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  Moses says in the law that we are to kill such women by stoning. What do You say about it?’ This was all set up as a test for Jesus; His answers would give them grounds to accuse Him of crimes against Moses’ law. Jesus bent over and wrote something in the dirt with His finger. They persisted in badgering Jesus, so He stood up straight.

Jesus replied, ‘Let those among you who have not sinned cast the first stone.’[2]  Once again Jesus bent down to the ground and resumed writing with His finger. The Pharisees who heard Him stood still for a few moments and thenbegan to leave slowly, one by one, beginning with the older men.

 Eventually only Jesus and the woman remained, and Jesus looked up. Jesus said, ‘Dear woman, where is everyone? Are we alone? Did no one step forward to condemn you?’ The woman replied, ‘Lord, no one has condemned me.’ Jesus said,‘Well, I do not condemn you either; go, and from now on sin no more.’

Again, Jesus spoke to the crowds. ‘I am the light that shines through the world[3]; if you walk with Me, you will thrive in the nourishing light that gives life and will not know darkness.’

__________________________________

In the story of the Woman Caught In Adultery, we see Jesus embody God’s perspective on how to balance judgment and mercy.[4] We will first look at the context of the story, then at the person of Jesus, and finally why this story matters to us. Let’s start with some background.

·      This happened on the day after thcelebration of the Feast of the Tabernacle/ Feast of Booths. The Jews lived in huts during this time to commemorate how the Israelites lived in tents during the Exodus.

·      Moses had commanded that during the days of this Feast the law be read, so this was an annual, purposeful focus on the Law of God.

·      The main purpose was to thank God for his provision during the past in the wilderness wanderings (Lev 23:39-43) and in the present as seen in the harvest just completed (Deuteronomy 16:13-15).

·      The people were reminded of their profound dependence upon God for provision. They would recite Psalm 118:25 every day: “O Lord, defend/rescue/deliver us, and prosper us.”

·      They had a ceremony in which four different types of plants were brought to the altar. These four plants symbolized four different kinds of Jews.  One plant had a good fragrance and a good taste, symbolizing knowledge of the Torah and good deeds. One only had fragrance (only good deeds); one only had taste (only knowledge of the Torah), and one had neither. 

·      There was a series of water offerings each morning in the temple, commemorating the provision of water in the wilderness. When Jesus tells them to come to him to drink (7:37-38), he is linking himself to God’s provision in the Exodus.

·      Menorahs would be lit in the House of Water Drawing, which was in the Court of Women in the temple. People would dance and sing, “Blessed be he who hath not sinned; and he who sinned and repented, he is forgiven.”[5]

·      Jesus' proclamation that he is the light of the world (8:12) linked him to the feast's lamp-lighting ceremonies that commemorated the pillar of fire during the Exodus. The morning that Jesus is challenged is the morning that four festival lamps in the court in the Temple ("The light of the world") were put out.

So Jesus claimed to be the Water and the Light while quoting a revered Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, all to show that he is the Messiah for whom they have been longing. The good news was that the God whom they worshipped during this feast was with them. Many of the people were starting to believe. The Pharisees want to kill him; they think he was blaspheming. But to kill him they need a formal trial and a Rome-sanctioned execution.[6]

So the next morning, on the Sabbath, they meet Jesus in the temple. The temple area was about 35 acres, and in the middle sat a courtyard surrounded on three sides by a large, covered walkway that connected the temple court to Herod’s garrison. His soldiers patrolled the courtyard by walking on top of the covered walkways in case anything bad developed. Josephus noted that during feast days, an entire legion (over 4,000 men) would patrol the temple area.

Into this venue, the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery for judgment. They most likely bring her into the Court of Women. If all went well, they might be able to trick Jesus into ordering capital punishment, and then Rome would take care of their problem because at the time the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission for capital punishment. If that didn’t happen, they figured they could show how much more they knew about the law with the hope that this crowd of simpletons would finally reject him as Law Breaker and so reject him as the Messiah.

This seems like a win/win for the Pharisees. Jesus gets arrested or his lack of knowledge of the Law gets him rejected. Things do not go as planned.

·      As has often been noted, they only brought the woman. That’s unusual to say the least. Even then, it took two to tango, and the Law demanded that both be brought to the trial.

·      A formal accusation required two eyewitnesses. There was no circumstantial evidence allowed in a case like this. The eyewitnesses would have warned couple ahead of time about the consequences of their action, the couple had to acknowledge this, and then the witnesses had to watch them do it. Odds are really good those standards were not met. I suspect Jesus (and perhaps the whole crowd) realized this.

·      The death penalty was virtually obsolete in Jewish culture by the time of Jesus[7] (in fact, that sentence was highly unusual ever since the time of Moses). Over the centuries, the Sanhedrin had increasingly made the standards incredibly high because they believed the Law was meant to teach, not kill.[8]

·      Remember: the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission.

·      A legit trial had to happen in front of a duly constituted court, which included over twenty Sanhedrin leaders who sat in a semicircle so they could be sure they were all paying attention. If capital punishment happened outside of a court ruling, those who administered the punishment were considered murderers.

·      The Talmudic Sanhedrin trecate (treatise), written before the time of Christ, clarified Deuteronomy’s command that the eyewitnesses should start the stoning (thus the “cast the first stone”).[9] There apparently aren't any eyewitnesses – or at least the text does not record their presence.

·      Capital punishment could not be carried out on a day sacred to religion – and this was a Sabbath.

So, following a celebration in which the people prayed for God to save them, and in which they celebrated the combination of Law and Good Deeds, Jesus will show what it looks like when their longings are fulfilled. He begins by honoring the Law.

When an accusation was brought, a priest was required to write the law that had been broken, along with the names of the accused, somewhere where the marks were not permanent – which was usually the dust on the floor of the temple. Early Armenian translations of this passage claim that is the proper understanding of this passage[10] - that Jesus wrote first the name and crime of the woman in the dust on the temple courtyard floor.

After Jesus writes, he says,  “Let those sinless of the same crime (which should be one of her eyewitness accusers) cast the first stone.”  It’s a brilliant response. First, I suspect it reminded the crowd of the song that had been sung in that very court - “Blessed be he who hath not sinned; and he who sinned and repented, he is forgiven”. If so, Jesus’ comment reminded them of their sin and chastised them for wanting to do something that is at odds with what they just celebrated.

After Jesus says this, He begins writing again; considering the Armenian texts as well as the fact that everyone will eventually leave, it seems reasonable to speculate that he wrote the names and crimes of the Pharisees who broke the law, which was all of them.

Surely his audience remembered Jeremiah 17:13:

"All those who leave your way shall be put to shame (publicly embarrassed), those who turn aside from my ways will have their names written in the dust and blotted out, for they have departed from Yahweh, the fountain of the waters of life."

By writing, he points to himself as the Baptizer of Israel, and to the Pharisees as those whose name will be blotted out.[11]

And that was that. The crowd melts away. Jesus asks, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” She replies, “No one, Lord.” Jesus responds, “I don’t condemn you either [that is, I am not an eyewitness against you], but stop your sin.”

No one could say Jesus was a Lawbreaker, but He refused to use the Law as a tool of oppression and shame. Going back to the symbols of the previous week’s festival: He had the fragrance of the Law and the taste of good deeds.

And then, just in case the crowd was missing all the ways Jesus was proclaiming himself to be the Messiah, the Savior they longed for, he immediately says, in a courtyard in which the menorahs and the “light of the world” festival lamps had been lit and then put out,

“I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

___________________________________________

How do we balance judgment and mercy? How should we treat sin – and sinners – in our midst of our church community?[12] This question ought to matter to all of us, because no one in this room is exempt. You will sin; you will have to deal with the sin of others. We are all going to be in the place of either the Pharisees or the woman who sinned at some point in our life. So what do we do? How do we learn from this story?

We look to Jesus for our example.

We must exercise righteous judgment of sin and show mercy and grace to those who sin.

This is not always easy.

If we aren't careful we can get so caught up in condemning the sin that we forget to love to those who sin. Religious Pharisees think mercy is a sign of moral weakness. They think people should get what’s coming to them – especially people whose sins are so visibly public. They appoint themselves as moral watchdogs in the church trained not simply to be truthful and challenging but to tear the sinner to pieces. Their goal is not to point people who deserve judgment toward the mercy found only in Christ. They might never say that out loud, but their goal is suffering, not sanctification; punishment, not restoration.

When we look to Jesus, we see that our goal should be not to shame, humiliate, or drive to despair those around us who are caught in sin; our goal should be to bring to repentance and restoration those who have fallen. We may need to start by calling sin what it is in the lives of those who refuse to see it in themselves (as Jesus did with the Pharisees). But even if we do that so the self-righteous and proud are humbled – even if we are the self-righteous and proud who are humbled by our honest brothers and sisters in Christ - we must never lose sight of the goal of the Great Physician: to heal the sin-sick soul. The great commentator Matthew Henry wrote,

“In this matter Christ attended to the great work about which he came into the world, that was, to bring sinners to repentance; not to destroy, but to save. He aimed to bring, not only the accused to repentance, by showing her his mercy, but the prosecutors also, by showing them their sins; they thought to ensnare him, he sought to convince and convert them.”

If the first thing we have to be careful of is too much judgment of sin, the second thing is becoming so focused on extending mercy to the sinner that we forget there is a just judgment for sin. This story if often cited as an example of why we shouldn’t exercise judgment, That badly misses the point. Jesus absolutely judged. When Jesus wrote in the dust, he (presumably) wrote that they were all lawbreakers. He didn't let the Pharisees off the hook. He didn’t say to the woman, “Hey, it’s no problem. Go do what you want.”  He said, “No one hear can formally accuse you, but…stop sinning.” He didn’t try to contextualize her situation. He didn’t say, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” In his mercy, he gave her the same kind of truth he gave the Pharisees: she had sinned, and she needed to repent.

Telling the truth about sin is not a bad thing. Offering sincere, honest, biblically sound judgment about sinful actions is not a sign that you are mean; it is a sign that you understand the importance of walking in the way of Christ.

Love actually requires honest judgment. Why? Because sin destroys. Someone talked last week in Message+ about people who are the “casualties of sin.” Right. It eats away at your peace with God, with others, and within ourselves. Sin corrodes relationships, it distorts love, it sows something we are going to reap, and “the wages is sin is death.” A holy, loving God must use judgment in the service of justice so that evil does not have the last word. For all of us who have experienced the sin of others crush our lives, it is heaven’s promise that evil will be held to account.[13] 

But we have to be careful. If we don’t confront sin in love, we will be abrasive and mean (see 1 Corinthians 13).  And if we don’t do this with an eye on the sin in our own lives, we will do this with a kind of pride that God despises.

Here’s the reality: all of us have hurt others with our words, our attitudes, our choices, our violence. A holy, loving God cannot let that evil go unaddressed. We long for justice when it’s meant for people who have done us wrong, but if God’s justice were to rain down on us all and give us the justice we deserve right now, we would all beg for mercy. There is no one righteous (Romans 3:10). If Jesus were here, and we all demanded that sin be addressed, we would all walk away as Jesus wrote in the dust on the floor of this church.

Here's the tension we must embrace: We should long for God’s justice (as we see the devastation of sin and the need for someone to hold people to account) but we should also crave God’s mercy (as we see our own sin, condemnation and need for a Savior).

When justice and mercy work together, just judgment drives us to our knees at the foot of the Cross; mercy reaches down from that cross and pulls us to our feet. This is where we look back to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), the embodiment of God’s justice and mercy.

It is on the cross that God’s holy justice was perfectly satisfied while His holy mercy was perfectly displayed.[14] Someone has to pay the price for sin, and God in his mercy said, “Let it be me.”  This included the woman and her accusers - and all of us. The Israelite prayer, “O Lord, rescue us, deliver us, save us,” has come true; Jesus has come so that the world through him might be saved. 

 ______________________________________________________________________________

[1] This is how Augustine described the story of the woman caught in adultery

[2] “ αναμαρτητος, meaning the same kind of sin, adultery, fornication, c. Kypke has largely proved that the verb αμαρτανειν is used in this sense by the best Greek writers.” (Adam Clarke)

[3] “So in Bamidbar Rabba: "The Israelites said to God, O Lord of the universe, thou commandest us to light lamps to thee, yet thou art THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: and with thee the light dwelleth."’ (Adam Clarke)

[4] Your Bible may note, “Many early manuscripts omit 7:53–8:11.” Eusebius, the first historian of the Church, claimed to have learned the story from Papias, who lived from about 60 AD to about 130 AD.  Augustine thought the early church removed the story out of fear that adultery would be encouraged by Jesus’ display of mercy. Whatever the reasons, the event is alluded to very early. It appears to have been widely known and accepted in the early church, and it soon appears in the canon.

[5] http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/john_gospel/Chapter%208.htm

[6] At times, Rome allowed the Sanhedrin packed with their picks to use capital punishment. At the time this happened, the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission.

[7] (Mishnah Makkot 1:10): “A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says: they would have multiplied shedders of blood in Israel.” Read a good article here: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-death-penalty-in-jewish-tradition/2/

[8] http://www.reformjudaismmag.net/02summer/focus.shtml

[9] “With reference to two offenders subject to this penalty, the Pentateuch says, "Thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people" (Deut. xiii. 10 [A. V. 9]), and again (ib. xvii. 7), "The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people." (Sanh. vi. 4; 45a et seq.; Sifra, Emor, xix.; Sifre, Num. 114; ib. Deut. 89, 90, 149, 151). “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_and_corporal_punishment_in_Judaism#In_Rabbinic_Law

[10] https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/john-8.html

[11] The Bible does not connect those dots, but considering the audience and the context, it seems likely.

[12] I realize the ‘church’ had not started yet, but the religious Jewish community is probably the closest comparison we have before the NT church community began.

[13] So is there any place for judgment and justice when God extends mercy? First, the Bible clearly teaches that there will be practical consequences to our actions. Forgiveness does not necessarily negate the fact that we will reap what we sow. The woman’s adultery may still have ruined her marriage even thought the forgiveness of Christ was available to her. Second, there are consequences to our actions within God ordained systems of government. Those harmed by rape may extend forgiveness, but the rapist will still go to jail – and rightly so. Finally, there is an ultimate day of judgment when we will all give an answer to God for what we have done. It’s possible to the first two forms of judgment can be avoided depending on the nature of the sin, but no one will escape the final accounting.

[14] Read “The Only Thing That Counts” for a better understanding of why Jesus needed to die in order for God’s justice to be satisfied. http://clgonline.org/the-only-thing-that-counts-galatians-51-8/

Harmony #45: The Yeast Of The Sadducees (Mark 8:13-21; Matthew 16:5-12)

I mentioned last week that the “yeast of the Pharisees” and the “yeast of Herod/Sadducees” were so different they each get their own week. This week, let’s look at the Sadducees.[1]

After the end of the Jewish exile in Babylon, the high priests (mostly Sadducees) ruled at the pleasure of Rome, who stacked the Sanhedrin to get the results they wanted. The Sadducees got their power and privilege from cooperation/collaboration.

They controlled Judaism’s two most important institutions: the Temple in Jerusalem and the Sanhedrin, the governing body for religious and civil issues. They also enjoyed the military backing of Rome, so Temple Law enforcement was backed by Roman muscle. At one point, Herod put the Golden Eagle, a ‘holy’ standard their army carried into war, on the entrance to the Temple. The Sadducees accepted it.[2]

The Gospel writers use the yeast of the “Sadducee” and “Herod” interchangeably. This is important, because we are talking about Herod.

Herod’s family had largely converted to Judasim; he contributed to building the temple in Jerusalem; he distributed food during famine and cut taxes; the economy did well. So far, so good. But his extreme cruelty is legendary - the massacre of the children when Jesus was born, killing his own family, beheading John the Baptist, etc.

So just to be clear, the Sadducees were willing to overlook Herod’s evil because it worked out well for them.[3] Why? Because the goodies of Empire were their only hope; they weren’t waiting for a Messiah.

We do not speak of the messianic views of the Sadducees, because they had none. They had no belief in the kingdom of God as such, either in this world or that which is to come. Their doctrine left no place for a [divine]Messiah… their only fear was that some impostor messiah might arise and cause them to be deprived of the offices they held at the pleasure of their conquerors.[4]

If they wanted to change the situation of the Jewish people, it was going to happen in the halls of earthly power.[5] You see their hearts revealed clearly when Jesus was on trial.

“Here is your king {Jesus},” Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered. (John 19:14-15) 

As for the crowd, they had turned on Jesus when they realized he was serious when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a warhorse while weeping because they did not understand the way to peace.

The Sadducees were dissolving as a party when Roman destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D. in response to a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem. Rome took 13,000 Jewish slaves and the loot from the temple and used both to build and pay for the building of the coliseum. Note: The Romans destroyed the Temple. The Romans never liked them. The Sadducees were tools for Roman power. Their passing was not mourned.

We often talk about religious syncretism as Christianity synchronizing with contradictory beliefs from other religions. We don’t often talk about syncretism with the Empire. I believe that this is the yeast of the Pharisees. Their hope was not in God, but in man. Not from Heaven, but from earth. Not to bring about the Kingdom through evangelization, but through legislation. This has been addicting through all of church history.

1. In the 1st century, a good Sadducee was a good Roman. Followers of Jesus had no time for that. Christian values were sharply at odds with Roman values. A sincere Christian was not going to be a good Roman by Roman standards. It’s why Rome was so suspicious of them.

2. But in 154, Justin Martyr, in an attempt to stop Emperor Pius from persecuting Christians, wrote, “Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men.” As Jason Porterfield points out, “whole swaths of life were moved out from under God’s authority and placed under the authorities of this world.”Now, instead of everything belonging to God, everything but worship belonged to Caesar. As a result, “Caesars of this world became increasingly bold in telling Christians what they must do on earth.” [6]

3. When Constantine legalized Christianity in the 300s, it didn’t take long for a good Christian to look a lot like a good Roman, to the point that Augustine developed an argument for how Christians could fight for Rome’s military machine that brutalized the world and killed tens of thousands of Jewish people and Christians. Constantine brutally conquered under the banner of a cross, the Christian symbol of laying down one’s life in love.

“For the first three hundred years of the church any suggestion that the aims of the kingdom of Christ could be served by corrupt Caesars would have been viewed as ludicrous or even demonic. The early Christians knew that the ways of Jesus and the ways of Caesar are forever incompatible. One is Christ; the other is anti-Christ… Christians never thought Caesar was capable of carrying out the work of Christ. ― Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

4. In letters between King Clovis and local bishops in the 500s, we see the church converting and being converted by an ancient warrior ruling class. Bishop Avitus urged King Clovis to let the church tag along into the regions he intended to conquer. For the first time, the church began to spread the message of the cross behind the point of a sword. To be conquered was to be Christianized.

5. In the eastern Byzantine Empire, the emperors considered themselves to be the “supreme pontiff” of the Church, as well as head of state. Justinian I called this harmonia: the state and the Church should work together for God’s will on earth under the emperor’s leadership. The bishops at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 affirmed that nothing could be done in the Church contrary to the emperor’s will. This doctrine remained in effect for centuries.[7]

6. Fast forward to Charlemagne, who was crowned by Pope Leo II as the first “Holy RomanEmperor” on Christmas Day in the year 800. What a change in 800 years. The claim was that Charlemagne was chosen by God to revive the glories of the Roman Empire - and to defend and promote the cause of the church, which were starting to look like one and the same. Like Herod and Constantine, he used state power and money to help the church do its mission. Meanwhile, Charlemagne also waged a brutal thirty-year campaign against the Saxons. In 782 he ordered the beheading of more than four thousand, five hundred Saxons on a single day. Why? They weren’t Christian. This, from his set of laws titled Ordinances for the Region of Saxony. “If any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death.” In 800 years, Christians had gone from being the ones killed for their faith to being the ones supporting the killing of others because of their faith.

7. In the Middle Ages, when the church sought to win warrior cultures to the faith in France, Germany, or Scandinavia, etc., Jesus morphed into the ultimate warlord and his church into the knights of Christ. Once again, the church converted many, and it found itself converted in the process. By the time Alexius I pleaded for help aganst the march of Islam, the church was ready to be the “knight of Christ.” This is when Bernard of Clairvaux (AD 1090–1153) wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood by appropriating Paul’s letter to the Ephesians - which was about spiritual warfare.

“The knight who puts the breastplate of faith on his soul in the same way as he puts a breastplate of iron on his body is truly intrepid and safe from everything…So forward in safety, knights, and with undaunted souls drive off the enemies of the cross of Christ.”

If, by the 500s, being Christian was indistinguishable from being Roman, by the 1000s being Christian was indistinguishable from being Frankish or Saxon. Europe and the church found themselves converted to each other’s ways. Martin Luther (1500s) even developed a ‘doctrine of two kingdoms’ claiming God willed the state and the church to be governed by a different set of morals. In their private lives, Christians should follow the ethic of Jesus. In their public role as citizens, Christians should follow the lead of the Empire. Now, our private lives belonged to God, but our public lives belonged to Caesar.

In Western history, Europe has long intermingled church and state in various ways (Catholic, Anglican Church of England, and Protestant[8]). On how that went over the years, look up “Inquisition.” To this day, many countries in Europe either have a state church or support one church over the other.[9] How’s that going now, you wonder?

The 2022 Talking Jesus report (a partnership between Alpha, the Evangelical Alliance, HOPE Together, Luis Palau Association and Kingsgate Community Church) describes the current state of faith in the UK[10]: 48% of the population described themselves as 'Christian' of which 6% described themselves as 'practicing Christians'.[11]

To bring us up to date:

“The church in every western power after Constantine has at some point succumbed to the Siren seduction of empire and has conflated Christianity and nationalism into a single syncretic religion. Rome, Byzantium, Russia, Spain, France, England, and Germany have all done it. Seventeen centuries ago the Roman church got tangled up in imperial purple. In the 1930s, the German evangelical church got tangled up in Nazi red and black. The Anglican church spent a long time tangled up in the Union Jack[12]. Today the American evangelical church is tangled up in red, white, and blue. That this kind of entanglement has been a common failure of the church for centuries doesn’t make it any less tragic.”  ― Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

This is, I believe, the yeast of the Sadducees, the yeast of Herod. It is the yeast of corrupt power, compromise and anti-supernaturalism that results in followers of Jesus at least living as if they believe it is through earthly power and control that we can and should bring about the Kingdom of God.

Yet over and over in history, when the Kingdom of God got too closely intertwined with Empire, it compromised the church. The church was never made to be authoritarian in a culture in order to bring about transformation. It was always made for persuasive, loving, truthful service as it preached the gospel, living as an embodiment of the Kingdom of God to bring about transformation. #salt #light 

Once again, I looked for some help online in what modern-day Sadducees would look like. There is not nearly as much about Sadducees as there is about Pharisees. I wonder if it’s because it steps on our political toes, and that’s meddlin’! But if Jesus warned about it, I have to preach it. This list is built from an article called “7 Signs The Leaven Of Herod Has Taken Root In Your Life.”[13]

[Quick note: I believe Christians have a responsibility to be actively involved in our culture, doing justice and loving mercy. This list is not about disengagement from our society or even disengagement from politics. It’s about keeping our faith untainted by the values and priorities of the Empire as we go about spreading the Kingdom.] 

We forget that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood (people), but against principalities and power, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Our gaze is earthly rather than heavenly. We say we believe God is able; we say we believe in God’s sovereignty and providence in the world; we say that we have hope, joy and peace that surpasses our circumstances, but we don’t live as if we believe that. We don’t find ourselves turning to the power of God in the journey of life.

Our passion for political change eclipses our devotion for expanding the Kingdom of Christ. We don’t focus on praying and ‘bearing good fruit’ as much as we focus on getting out the vote.  We don’t rest in the power of God; we rest in the power of the legislature. We are more passionate about changing laws and promoting public policy than we are about taking the message of Jesus to the people impacted by that policy. We live in deep fear that the next election will crush us or in irrational optimism that it will save us. We trade our hope in the persuasion of the spirit for the might of the state.[14]

We think the symbols of the Empire and the temple go together. This goes back to the Roman symbols the Sadducees put in the temple or the cross Constantine fought under. Francis Schaeffer warned us about this decades ago:[15]

The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian. We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag.-  Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto

We believe a political leader is the key to restoring our nation. The Gospel is the key to restoring our nation. The identity and mission of the body of Christ does not depend upon who gets elected as president or Senator or governor. Voting for capable leaders is a way to practice biblical stewardship of our country, but the elevation of a leader to the role of a savior is borderline idolatry.

I remember more than one painting of Obama in which he was framed to look like Jesus; I saw a billboard for Trump that said, “Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders.” This is blasphemous. And when adoration reaches that point, we will be blind to the realities of what people are really like. Kevin Burgess writes in Dangerous Jesus,

“We will begin to excuse the inexcusable in our public leaders because public witness is not a priority. It’s not as important to be winsome or persuasive as it is to be powerful. It doesn’t matter how Christians look to the outside world when our guy is winning. There is not sin that success cannot atone for.”

If we act as though anyone other than Jesus is the hope of our nation or our church, then the leaven of Herod has taken root in us. Brian Zahnd, in talking about “faith leaders fawning over proximity to political power,” writes:

God may have occasionally worked his will through pagan kings in the world before Christ, but we’re now living in Anno Domini—the year of our Lord. If you’re looking for God to work his will through a pagan king (who will always coincidently belong to your political party!), I’m thinking you haven’t spent much time seriously reading and digesting the New Testament epistles. God is no longer raising up pagan kings to enact his purposes; God has raised Jesus from the dead, and the fullness of God’s purposes are accomplished through him!”  ― Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

And, I would add, through His church.

You believe a political party represents the Kingdom of God. Many Christians on both the Left and the Right act as if their particular political party represents God’s Kingdom. Meanwhile, at times Jesus made both the Pharisees and the Sadducees angry. He didn’t feel the need to fit neatly in a box. I’m quoting from KB again:

“If your wagon is hitched to Jesus, you will inevitably find yourself agreeing, intersecting, and aligning with all kinds of movements and political camps as you travel through the world. But rest assured, at some point, Jesus is going to complicate things and possibly get you kicked out.”

We talk about the world not being our home; neither is any party of the Empire. If we are not speaking prophetically to our own tribe, we’re missing something. If we start to think that a party represents the Kingdom of God, political rallies may begin to feel just as exciting and important as a church assembly or church retreat. In fact, passionate engagement in the political structure of the Empire can start to feel a lot like evangelism. Converting others to a political party can begin to feel like conversion to Christ, when it’s nothing of the kind.

And when that happens, “the fields ripe for harvest” looks a lot like conservatives if you are liberal and liberals if you are conservative. And if that is the lenses through which you view the problem, the solution will be to get them on the same side of the political aisle as you.

You get discipled more by political platforms than biblical principles.

·      Who disciples you the most on how we should view immigrants? Your Bible or partisan political figures?

·      Who disciples you the most on the value of marriage and family and all things swirling around sex?

·      Who disciples you the most on how we should treat those who live in poverty or sickness, or the widow and orphan?

·      We read about how Jesus dissolves culturally biased differences (“neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female”) such that we see each other as equally valuable image bearers of God. Does your party treat all people – all people – as image bearers of equal dignity. No? Do not be discipled by them.

·      Jesus calls for individuals to be characterized by humility, repentance, forgiveness, and justice combined with mercy, grace, generosity, love, and the honoring of all people. Does your party and their candidates do that, or do they fight their political fights with the weapons of the world? They fight like the world? Then do not be discipled by them.[16]  

·      Does our political system value the values of the Sermon on the Mount? No? Then do not be disciple by it.

·      James said God opposed the proud but gives grace to the humble. Does our political system do that, or does it glorify the proud and run over the humble?

·      Does our system value humility and repentance, or arrogance and justification?

·      Does our system believe the ends justifies the means (winning at any cost) or does it believe how we get there is just as important as where we are going?

·      Does it reward mercy or vengeance?

·      Does it value the Golden Rule?

·      Does it encourage us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us?

·      Does it admire those who insist that sacrificial, costly love is the life more abundant?

Don’t be discipled by the Empire. As we seek to engage in the world but not of it – as we engage in a political system while trying not to be of it -  may God give us the strength to refuse to be sucked into the Way of Caesar and stay true to the Way of Christ.

And may the salt and light that God intends to come with the presence of His people truly offer righteous preservation in a decaying world, and shine hope-filled gospel light into even the darkest of places.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

[1] A key book that covers today’s topic is John Dickson’s Bullies and Saints, from which many of my historical examples have been pulled.

[2] Though some of the common folk did not. https://www.jpost.com/judaism/the-golden-eagle-in-jerusalem-history-repeats-itself-618440

[3] Meanwhile, they became rich by cheating people who came to the temple to offer sacrifices, a thing Jesus did not care for at all (Matthew 21:12-13).

[4] “Ancient Jewish Views Of The Messiah,” by Edward Wicher https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/474263

[5] The explanation is from N.T. Wright, as paraphrased at https://www.johnpiippo.com/2010/11/why-did-sadducees-deny-idea-of.html

[6] As quoted in Fight Like Jesus, by Jason Porterfield

[7] https://brewminate.com/the-relationship-between-church-and-state-since-the-ancient-world/

[8] John Calvin (1500s), the ‘Pope of Geneva’, used his combined church/civil authority to burn a heretic to death – slowly, over green wood. It took half and hour. Christians who were once burned at the stake for their faith now burned others for their faith.

[9] The Puritans, escaping Anglican persecution in Europe, brought the muddled mix of church and state authority with them. In Puritan colonies, public taxes supported the church. Voting rights were limited to church members in many places. In Connecticut, people were fined for not attending church services. Puritans believed that the state was empowered to use corporal punishment, banishment, and execution to combat heresy. 

Between 1658–1692, Quakers were executed and Baptists imprisoned for their faith.

[10] England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[11] https://talkingjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Talking-Jesus-Report-A4-AUG-23-WEB.pdf

[12] The flag of England being the official flag of the Church of England.

[13] By Joseph Mattera, with some expansions of my own.

[14] Kevin Burgess, Dangerous Jesus

[15] This requires several myths. The “myth of righteousness” sets values of the Empire on par with the values of the Kingdom (in which both are seen as part of the euangelion, the good news of God’s plan for the world). The “myth of greatness” as defined by the standards of Babylon and Rome: financial, political, and/or military strength as the markers of success.  The “myth of innocence” sees the power, prosperity, and peace of the Empire as achieved by and sustained by thoroughly righteous means and people. The “myth of worthiness” demands an appreciation of and allegiance to the state as a profoundly moral responsibility for Christians.

[16] https://www.christianpost.com/voices/7-signs-the-leaven-of-herod-has-taken-root-in-your-life.html

Harmony #44: The Yeast of the Pharisees (Mark 8:13-21; Matthew 16:5-12)

Then Jesus left them, got back into the boat, and went to the other side. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. And Jesus ordered them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod/Sadducees!” So they began to discuss this among themselves, saying, “Is it because we brought no bread.” When Jesus learned of this, he said, “You who have such little faith! Why are you arguing among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand?

Have your hearts been hardened? Though you have eyes, don’t you see? And though you have ears, can’t you hear? Don’t you remember? “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you pick up?” They replied, “Twelve.” When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you pick up?” They replied, “Seven.”  

Then he said to them, “Do you still not understand? How could you not understand that I was not speaking to you about bread? But beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” Then they understood that he had not told them to be on guard against the yeast in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. 

“They they understood.” Ah hah! I love the disciples. They are so ordinary. Peter: “Guys, we forgot the bread. Again.” John: “It’s fine. I have some crumbs in my pocket he can multiply.” Andrew: “I was responsible for bread last time. This is on Thomas.” James: “I wonder if we should have brought unleavened bread if it's a yeast issue.”

Thank you, gospel writers, for giving us all permission to be ordinary. If this is where the bar is for following Jesus, I can clear it, and so can you. And if Jesus can put up with those kind of disciples, so can we.

Now, to the yeast.

* * * * *

Pharisees and Sadducees emerged when the Jews left their exile in Babylon. The Essenes and Zealots popped up later, but the Pharisees and Sadducees were the two main parties. Think Republicans and Democrats, but there is still the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, etc. There were key differences.

• Pharisees dominated the synagogue (spiritual community center), Sadducees the temple (rituals of worship).

• Pharisees acknowledged all the books we know as the Old Testament; the Sadducees highly favored the books of Moses (the Law) and basically ignored the prophets.

• Pharisees acknowledged an oral tradition passed down by the rabbis; Sadducees rejected the oral tradition.[1]

• The Pharisees believed in the supernatural; the Sadducees didn’t.

• Pharisees were the party of the people; the Sadducees of the elite.

• The Pharisees kept Rome away; the Sadducees collaborated.

The “yeast of the Pharisees” and the “yeast of Herod/Sadducees” is different.  In fact, they are so different they are each going to get our focus for a week. This week, let’s look at the Pharisees.

When Jesus called out the Pharisees, their hypocrisy was a common theme.[2] Here’s just a sample:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matt. 23:23-24)

 “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’” (Mark 7:6-7)

Notice that Jesus wasn’t calling out the yeast of Plato, or Simon the Sorcerer. I think he expected people to see that for what it was. Magic is bad. Rome’s Pax Romana (peace by the sword) is not a Kingdom value any more than the very immoral culture surrounding Roman temple worship. He’s calling out the ones who are supposed to be safeguarding truth and righteousness who had become “the blind leading the blind.” (Matthew 15:14)

These are the kinds of verses that keep me up at night.

Since people are the same everywhere, Jesus would call out the same thing in some of us that he called out in them. So, here we are J

I went online to see what people were saying about modern-day Pharisees. And let me tell you – people have a LOT to say about Pharisees. I was a little worried that if I come up with the list on my own, you might be thinking, “That felt really personal!” and wonder if I was crafting my sermon around you!  Heads up: I hope it feels as personal to you as it did to me.  So, let me welcome you to my holy discomfort.

 1. Pharisees Are All Talk And No Action

Jesus said the following concerning the Pharisees:

“So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matt 23:3-4).

We know how this works.

• The environmentalists who flies a private plane everywhere and leave a huge carbon footprint with their mansions.

• The free speech advocate who practices “cancel culture” with those who disagree.

• The person with the co-exist bumper sticker who attacks those who disagree with them on particular issues.

• The politician who campaigns on family values while having a year’s long affair or getting kicked out of a theater for public make-out session with someone not their spouse.[3]

• The new face of the fight against the sexual exploitation of children who is revealed to have sexually exploited the women who helped him do undercover stings.[4]

The Pharisees talked a good game, but they were not the real deal. They were all talk. This creates such cynicism and distrust in those around them. If they can’t or don’t live up to their own words, why should we? Either they are lying or they don’t care enough for it to change their lives. 

Being all talk and no actions is why…

2. Pharisees Major in the Minors

For the Pharisees, everything was a big deal except the things that really matter. They tithed herbs meticulously while ignoring justice and mercy. It’s so much easier to look good in minor things than it is in major things. Shockingly, the major things are harder J If we look at that too much, we might have to address weakness, flaws, and even sinful failure. And that will not be okay to a Pharisee.

I’m not quite sure what our modern equivalents are to tithing mint. All I know is that Pharisees make light things weighty and weighty things light. It’s like a football team spending all its time nailing down the color scheme on the uniform while neglecting working out.  

• You’ve spent years finding a version of the Bible and put it on a hill on which you will die while your family lives with your toxic attitude.

• You start every day reading Our Daily Bread before going to work and mistreating your employees.

• You never swear, so your constant gossip is PG.

• You tithe 10% while the love of money overpowers the kind of generosity you could be showing with what God has given you.

It’s not that the minors are bad. But Majoring on the Minors lets you keep a tally of how good you are doing while avoiding the rottenness in your heart. It makes it easy to do the following…

3. Pharisees Care More About Looking Good Than Being Good

They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad (they carry more Scripture with them!) and their fringes long (they really remember the law!) and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. (Matt 23:5-8).

 I’ve been in many different churches, and these phylacteries and fringes seem to creep in everywhere.

• The size of a head covering.

• The wornness and amount of highlighting in your Bible.

• How you dressed on a Sunday to honor God.

• How much of the Bible you had memorized.

• How expressively you worshipped.

• What gift of the Holy Spirit you appeared to have.

• How impressively you could pray.

It’s not that the things on the list are bad things. It’s that you could look good in all these areas and not be a good person. Your Bible can be falling apart from use, you can dress to the 9s, you can the entirety Scripture committed to memory, you can dance without fear, you can speak with the tongue of men and of angels, you can pray as people think a mighty river has rolled into the room, but… if you don’t have love, if you neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness, it’s just empty show.  

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matt 23:25-28)

Jesus is talking about integrity: the integration of our exterior and interior lives; the alignment of our heart and hands. We should be what we do. Since what looks good is so important to a Pharisee…

4. Pharisees convince themselves they don’t have any “serious” sin to repent of.

“The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’.” (Luke 18:11)[5]

Pharisees have a reputation and status to maintain. Acknowledging sin issues would involve vulnerability and weakness, neither of which a Pharisee can afford to have. Repentance is for broken, unhealthy people, not for them. If they have to put on a facade of repentance to look good to others, they usually talk about things in the past, but never in the present. All their struggles are apparently behind them.

Once Pharisees have convinced themselves that they are not part of sick who need the Great Physician, they will be full of disdain and lack empathy for those around us who are struggling.“What is their problem? Why can’t they be as spiritually mature as I am?”

This is why…

5. If someone tries to correct Pharisees or point out flaws, they get angry and offended.Pharisees see any rebuke as a personal attack and circle the wagons. Pharisees will always have an excuse. It’s never their fault. They were pushed into some corner, or somebody pushed their buttons. They lack the self-awareness to see themselves as others see them; even if they did, they lack the humility to take it seriously. They will always turn the interrogation spotlight on others and never let the light that others shine on them do the work it’s meant to do. This is why…

6. A Pharisee’s friends primarily look, act and think alike.

Pharisees are exclusive. This makes sense, since everyone else is far less righteous and much more sick. These less righteous people might even be openly repenting – in front of others, mind you - and asking God to search their hearts.  Pharisees are really uncomfortable when they are around people who practice true honesty or humility, because who knows where that might lead?

If there are conversations about sin and its impact in the world and the importance of the transformation that happens on the other side of repentance, it’s always going to be about others who are ruining the church or our culture.

If Pharisees have a small group that does a book study, and they have to choose between one in which ‘judgment begins in the house of God’ vs. one in which looks to call down fiery judgment on the Samaritans around us, it will always be about the Samaritans.

The danger is always “out there” in another group. It’s never in their circle, and certainly not in them. Because they need their circles to be homogenous and safe…

7. Pharisees believe church outsiders should conform to a certain lifestyle before they are accepted as “Christian.” They can’t be “part of the group,” unless they meet your criterion: “Stop the drinking and smoking, don’t wear that Deadpool t-shirt to church (#trueevent), and those sleeve tats are making me nervous.” Pharisees insist that people follow their way of doing things. Fellowship with a Pharisee will always be on a Pharisee’s terms.  Maybe another way of saying it is this: You might be a Pharisee if you can’t accept those God accepts, on God’s terms.

So what’s the cure?[6]

Honesty

Practice self-evaluation.

1. “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.” (2 Corinthians 13:5)

2. 1 Corinthians 11 tells us to examine ourselves before we share communion: “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged by God.” (27-32)

Embrace trustworthy feedback. "To learn, you must love discipline; it is stupid to hate correction." (Proverbs 12:1)

See ourselves as God sees us: image bearers in need of a Savior.

1. “And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:10)

2. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:49)

Live Transparent Lives. Without a willingness to be transparent, we cannot bear each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2); comfort one another (2 Corinthians 1:4-7); encourage each other (1 Thessalonians 5:11); forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32); care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25); nor weep or rejoice with each other (Romans 12:15).[7]

Humility

Charles Spurgeon once said,

“If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him; for you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied, for if he knew you better he might change the accusation, and you would be no gainer by the correction. If you have your moral portrait painted, and it is ugly, be satisfied; for it only needs a few darker touches, and it would be still nearer the truth.”

This doesn’t mean we beat ourselves up constantly. Self-loathing is not a fruit of the Spirit. This doesn’t mean we should think more lowly of ourselves than we should, but we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we should. We could simultaneously be worse than other people know, and more glorious than they realize. Humility simply means we are to do an honest assessment of both.

Repent.

“Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Luke 3:8)

“Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.” (Revelation 2:5)

“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:19)

Repentance involves turning around, going the opposite direction. It’s not just words; it’s a heart change demonstrated by a life change.

Ask forgiveness.

“If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24)

Aaron Lewis and Willie Nelson have a song called “Sinner.” One of the verses goes like this: My eyes are open; now I can see all of the damage brought on by me.” That’s why we ask forgiveness. We have done damage. We want others to know that we see what we have done and how it has landed on them, and we want to make it right if we can. In asking forgiveness, we validate the dignity and value of those we have wronged. They are not just something to damaged and forgotten – they are imago dei, and one does not vandalize that which bears the image of God. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are temples of the Holy Spirit, and one does not simply vandalize a temple and act as if nothing is wrong.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Interestingly, this makes the Sadducees theologically conservative (safeguarding the foundation and being very skeptical of anything new) and the Pharisees theologically progressive in their time.

[2] Because the Pharisees were so highly respected, Jesus labeling them “whitewashed tombs” (Matt. 23:27-28) would have gotten people’s attention.

[3] True stories breaking this past week L

[4] The man whose story was told in Sound of Freedom left O.U.R. under the cloud of 7 women accusing him of sexual exploitation while on undercover operations. His former organization has released this statement. "Tim Ballard resigned from O.U.R. on June 22, 2023… O.U.R. is dedicated to combatting sexual abuse, and does not tolerate sexual harassment or discrimination by anyone in its organization.”

[5] E. Stanley Jones notes, “The measure of my spirit of criticism is the measure of my distance from Christ.”

[6] I got the lists of the problems and the cures from these websites: https://godtv.com/6-signs-modern-day-pharisee/, also https://firstcenturyfaithtoday.com/pharisees-5-signs/, as well as https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/warning-signs-of-a-pharisaical-heart.html, and https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/02/15/6-signs-that-you-might-be-a-pharisee/, oh and https://www.christianpost.com/news/5-signs-you-are-becoming-a-pharisee.html. Oh, and don’t forget https://outreachmagazine.com/features/22092-modern-day-pharisee.html

[7] Thanks for that handy list, smallgroups.com. https://www.smallgroups.com/articles/2010/benefits-of-transparency.html#:~:text=Without%20a%20willingness%20to%20be,(Romans%2012%3A15)

Harmony #43: Mission and Miracles (Mark 7:31-37; Matthew 12:38-41; Matthew 15:29-31)

Then Jesus went out again[1] from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis [where he had healed the demoniac]. Jesus went up a mountain, where he sat down.  Then large crowds came to him bringing with them the lame, blind, crippled, mute, and many others. They laid them at his feet, and he healed them.

They brought to him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking, and they asked him to place his hands on him. After Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, he put his fingers in the man’s ears, and after spitting, he touched his tongue. Then he looked up to heaven and said with a sigh, “Ephphatha” (that is, “Be opened”). And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue loosened, and he spoke plainly.

Then they came to Bethsaida [the hometown of Philip, Andrew, and Peter] . They brought a blind man to Jesus and asked him to touch him.  He took the blind man by the hand and brought him outside of the village. Then he spit on his eyes, placed his hands on his eyes and asked, “Do you see anything?”

Regaining his sight he said, “I see people, but they look like trees walking.” Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again. And he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”

As a result, the crowd was completely astounded when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and they praised the God of Israel. Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone. But as much as he ordered them not to do this, they proclaimed it all the more, saying, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

After sending away the crowd, Jesus immediately got into a boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha, in the region of Magadan. Now when the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test/tempt Jesus, they began to argue and asked him to show them a sign from heaven.  

He said, “When evening comes you say, ‘It will be fair weather, because the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, because the sky is red and darkening.’ You know how to judge correctly the appearance of the sky, but you cannot evaluate the signs of the times.”

Sighing deeply in his spirit Jesus said, “Why does this generation look for a sign? I tell you the truth, a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

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

THE SAME PASSAGE AS A COMMENTARIED NARRATIVE

Then Jesus went out again from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the very pagan Decapolis, where he had previously healed the demoniac. Apparently the demoniac had done what  Jesus requested: he told everyone about the mercy God had shown him.

When Jesus went up onto the side of a mountain and sat down, large crowds came to him bringing with them the lame, blind, crippled, mute, and many others. They laid them at his feet, and he healed them. The word had spread. This man can heal. For the Jewish people scattered throughout the region, surely this reminded them of what the prophet Isaiah had foretold long ago.

In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel….Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. (Isaiah 29:18-19; Isaiah 35:5-6)

At one point, they brought to him a deaf man who also had difficulty speaking, and they asked him to place his hands on him. So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, put his fingers in the man’s ears, and after spitting, he touched his tongue. Then he looked up to heaven and said with a sigh,  “Be opened”. And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue loosened, and the man spoke plainly.

Oh, and what that manner of healing conveyed to this man. The Gentile religions had a ritual of “enlivening images of the gods,” which involved anointing and thus symbolically “opening” the eyes, ears, and mouth of the image they had created to represent their god.

In this case, Jesus enlivened the real image-bearer of God: humans who are made in God’s image. Jesus’ actions testified that he is the True God come to restore the image of God in humanity – in this case, giving a sign of His power by literally opening his ears and loosening his tongue.[2]

Then they came to Bethsaida, the hometown of Philip, Andrew, and Peter. They would know their hometown; they would know if there were fakers or charlatans trying to trick Jesus. The people brought a man who had become blind to Jesus and, apparently aware of his previous miracle already, asked him to touch him.

Jesus took the blind man by the hand and brought him outside of the village. Then he spit on his eyes, placed his hands on his eyes and asked, “Do you see anything?” Regaining the sight he had lost, he said, “I see people, but they look like trees walking.”

Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again. And he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”

As a result of all the miracles Jesus did, the crowd was completely astounded when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and this largely pagan crowed praised the God of Israel. Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone.

But as much as he ordered them not to do this, they proclaimed it all the more, saying, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” This unqualified affirmation from Gentiles is about to stand in sharp contrast with the Pharisees and Sadducees.

After sending away the crowd, Jesus immediately got into a boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha, in the region of Magadan. Now when the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test/tempt Jesus, they began to argue and asked him to show them a sign from heaven.[3]

The Pharisees were unwilling to accept that the miracles Jesus did were empowered by God; they thought his power came from Satan (Matthew 12:24; Matthew 12:38). Their rabbis thought that demons and false gods could perform certain miracles on earth, but God alone could give signs from heaven:

·      the manna of Moses' time

·      the staying of the sun and moon by Joshua

·      the lightning and thunder that came at Samuel's word

·      the stroke of death on the captains who tried to arrest Elijah

·      the rainbow after the flood

So, as impressive of the miraculous meals were, they might have been done by magic or through the power of Satan.

The Sadducees did not believe in the existence of any Spirit or Satan himself.[4] They joined the Pharisees because they were fully persuaded that miracles were impossible, and any one who attempted to produce them would prove himself a miserable impostor.[5]

So this generation, represented by the Pharisees and Sadducees in a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ coalition, asked Jesus for some apocalyptic “sign from heaven” they didn’t believe he could do, something in line with the ʻmighty deeds of deliverance’ that God had worked on Israel’s behalf in rescuing it from slavery.

So Jesus gave them an example of a sign in the heavens – but not the kind of sign they were hoping for. This was one even children knew: “Red in the morning, sailor’s warning. Red at night, sailor’s delight.” And then he pointed out that they have missed the point. “You know how to read the signs in the sky, but you’re missing the signs of the times.”  

Sighing deeply in his spirit, Jesus said, “Why does this generation look for a sign?” It wasn’t just a question. It’s part of an oath formula that would typically include something like, “May God strike me down” or “May I be accursed of God” if a sign is given to this generation.[6]  It’s kind of like if Sheila, die-hard Florida State fan who bleeds garnet and gold and actually has hope this year, would say, “May I be a Gator fan with season tickets for life before I give you another sign.”

Then Jesus told them, “Here you are, a wicked[7] and adulterous generation, one that brings about the agony that comes from evil[8] and saddles people with idolatrous hardships, asking for yet one more impressive sign on your terms and not God’s. Here’s your sign, on God’s terms: the sign of Jonah. Surely you remember this passage:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish[9], and he said, “I called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol;[10] you heard my voice…Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.

“I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, but you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. “While I was fainting away[11], I remembered the Lord…“ Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.  (Jonah 2:3-10)[12]

To his interrogators, Jesus continued. “Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish; so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth before he returns to life. In fact, the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because when Jonah warned of the danger of judgment, that pagan Assyrian city repented without having a single sign, and God spared Nineveh.

Now someone greater that Jonah is here, and has provided numerous signs in line with the prophets, and will be raised from the dead, to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins for the entire world,[13] and God’s own people will refuse to listen and respond.”

* * * *

There’s a lot we could unpack in this section. I want to focus on what Jesus said to the Pharisees and Sadducees about signs.

“They desired a sign of their own choosing: they despised those signs which relieved the necessity of the sick and sorrowful, and called for something else which would gratify the curiosity of the proud. It is great hypocrisy, when we slight the signs of God's ordaining, to seek for signs of our own devising.”  (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary)

Jesus had been dropping signs like candy, but they weren’t the signs the Pharisees and Sadducees wanted. They had so many cynical reasons to dismiss amazing things as they held out for the grand earth-shattering, public spectacle on their terms.

Meanwhile, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, the mute can speak, the lame can walk, the possessed are freed, water turns into wine, thousands of people are fed with miraculous provision, dead people are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor.[14] None of that counted.[15]

So Jesus offers the sign God has ordained: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Jesus dies and then brings himself back to life, demonstrating His claim to be God in the flesh, the Incarnation, the one sent to save those who are spiritually dying. That’s the sign that matters the most.

I’ve been thinking of how tumultuous life is with its rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, and how often I’ve wished I had an sign (on my terms) that God is near. At times, I have prayed that I could see something obviously miraculous – an angel would be cool, or money magically appearing in my bank account, or I wake up 20 pounds lighter, or the Lions win the Superbowl. That, my friends, would be the sign that God is near and cares.

To connect the dots with today’s stories, that would mean I am dismissing all the signs of the miraculous intervention of God in the world around me just unfolding in what feels like ordinary life.

Take this church over 50 years. There were really good years and really bad years. The people in this congregation have been the source of hope to some and heartache to others. Both the church as an institution and the individuals in at have had times of spiritual feast and famine. It’s life in every church. When Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble,” he didn’t add, “except in your congregations, which will be perfect!” And yet here we are by the grace of God.

And let’s make it more complex:

• We have people whose church history (in some church) has been characterized by joy and blessing who are communing with those who have felt traumatized by churches they have attended, and they have to figure out how to understand each other when they respond so differently to the successes and scandals of the American church.

• We have people on sharply different sides of the political aisle with very strong opinions.

• We have people who have attended Black Lives Matters rallies taking communion with people who attended the Capitol on January 6.

• Remember Covid? We had small differences to navigate.

• We have different streams of the faith trying to make a unified river: Calvinists, Arminians, Provisionists, charismatic, liturgical, progressive and historical theologies.

How does this work? Is that not a miraculous act of God, working through the truth of His word and power of his Holy Spirit, to create what should be an impossible community out of what Paul calls a new humanity (Ephesians 2:15-16) transformed by and united around the person of Jesus Christ. And is it not a testimony to the great power of God when communities like ours make it work? Our Christ-centered unity is supposed to be a sign to us, and a sign to the world.

But it’s even more personal for me. I can’t ignore the times I have seen God’s supernatural intervention and provision in my life: finding the inexplicable ability to forgive when I was ready to settle in to bitterness; freedom from the chains of addiction; a slow arc of maturity against all odds (that still has a long way to go); surviving childhood trauma that could have crushed me but did not; navigating deep grief with hope. So many signs. It doesn’t feel to me like I got the signs I wanted every time and in every way, but I know I have those.

But Jesus reminded his generation that if none of those signs were there (or at least not obvious), there was one sign that mattered: the Resurrection of Jesus.

• The death it took to offer salvation to us establishes the depth of the love of God for all of His image-bearers.

• The Resurrection demonstrates His power to save from even the most foreboding valleys of the shadow of death.

• The gift of the Holy Spirit means The Comforter will always be with us.

In other words, the fact that God is for us and with us is enough on its own. Even if life does not unfold in the way we hoped; even if what God allows us to go through is baffling, the death and resurrection of Jesus have demonstrated that God is for us and with us.

[1] I am skipping the Feeding of the Four Thousand referred to by “then.” It’s functionally the same sign given to the Jewish people in the Feeding of the Five Thousand, but this time it’s for Gentiles.

[2] See Isaiah 29:18–19; 35:5–6

[3] Of course they argued. The Pharisees were religious conservatives; the Saducees religious liberals. The Pharisees appealed to the lower and middle class; the Sadducees the upper class. The Pharisees would not collaborate with Rome; Sadducees did. The Pharisees believed in the afterlife; the Sadducees did not. The Pharisees were waiting for a Messiah; the Sadducees were not.

[4] This difference is noted in Bengals Gnomen.

[5] Pulpit Commentary

[6] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Of The New Testament

[7] HELPS Word-studies

[8] HELPS Word Studies

[9] Interesting article speculating on what could have swallowed Jonah. https://armstronginstitute.org/315-what-was-the-great-fish-that-swallowed-jonah

[10] Sheol and the Pit are Old Testament terms that refer to the realm of the dead.

[11] The Hebrew says that his soul or nephesh fainted, meaning he took his last breath.

[12] When God then tells Jonah to “arise,” this is the same word Jesus used when he raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead. Mark 5:41reads: “Taking the child by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha Kum!” (“Little girl, I say to you, get up!“) – The previous three footnotes are from an article by Frank Turek at crossexamined.org

[13] I appreciated this point found in “Reading the Sign of Jonah: A Commentary on our Biblical Reasoning,” by Chad Pecknold (University of Cambridge) https://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/back-issues/vol-3-no-1-extending-the-signs-jonah-in-scriptural-reasoning/reading-the-sign-of-jonah-a-commentary-on-our-biblical-reasoning/

[14] A sign Jesus gave to John the Baptist, Matthew 11:5.

[15] In one sense the Pharisees were right to be cautious. The Jewish people remembered how Pharaoh’s magicians mimicked Moses’ miracles. The book of Acts records magicians getting very angry that miracle-workers are hurting their profits. Even today, spiritual warfare of the supernatural kind rages between forces of good and evil. There are principalities and powers in the unseen realms that have a very real impact on the world.

Harmony #42: Crumbs Of Faith (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28)

It’s been a minute since I preached last in this series, so let’s do a quick recap. In the preceding incident, Jesus challenged the Pharisees’ fixation on ritual purity laws to show that defilement comes from within us, not from outside of us. This is important to clarify, as he will be in places that the Jewish people considered unclean as he begins to move into his ministry to the Gentiles through Gentile regions.

In today’s episode, he will demonstrate to his disciples that Gentiles are not unclean as his ministry points toward the Gentiles.[1] The heart of today’s passage is a much discussed one.

She [a Gentile] came and bowed down before him and said, “Lord, help me!” Jesus replied, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not right to take the children’s [Israelites] bread and to throw it to the little household dogs [Gentiles].” “Yes, that is true, Lord,” she replied, “but even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs that they make fall from their masters’ table.”

Did Jesus just call a woman a dog? Well, yes, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

* * * * * *

First, let’s talk about dogs. We generally love dogs in our culture. They are our ‘best friend’. I love dogs, probably going back to a time my pet dog in Alabama saved me from a rabid rat that attacked me in our front yard. When Jesus was alive, dogs weren’t always the family pets like they are today in the United States. That’s not to say people didn’t bond with them; plenty of Greek and Roman records survive that show that dogs were often well loved. You see it in a lot of the literature and even tombstone inscriptions.

“My eyes were wet with tears, little dog, when I bore thee (to the grave)... In a resting place of marble, I have put thee for all time… sagacious thou wert like a human being. What a loved companion have we lost!"[2]

In the Jewish world, while dogs were domesticated, they generally represented uncleanness, rebellion, or savagery. It’s fair to say that while at least some Jewish people individually cared for dogs, corporately, they had a much lower view of dogs than did the Greeks and Romans.[3]

·     [Goliath] said to David, "Am I a dog that you come against me with sticks?" And David said, "No! Worse than a dog!" (1 Samuel 16:43)

·    Hazael said, "How could your servant, a mere dog, do this monstrous thing?" (2 Kings 8:13)

·    “Dogs have surrounded me; a gang of evildoers has closed in on me; they pierced my hands and my feet.” (Psalm 22:16)

·    “Don't give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.” Matthew 7:6

·    Rabbinic tradition explains that ‘as the sacred food was intended for men, but not for the dogs, the Torah was intended to be given to the Chosen People, but not to the Gentiles.’[4] 

So, the Jewish community that saw dogs as a symbol for the unclean, animal side of humanity lived within in a bubble in a broader culture that saw dogs in a much more positive light. While there is no way that calling a person a dog was a compliment at that time, what Jesus’ disciples heard and what the woman heard were different. More on that in a bit.

Second, let’s talk about Tyre and Sidon.

These cities were filled with descendants of the Caananites, cousins of the Israelites driven out of Canaan because of their terribly violent idolatrous practices (child sacrifice, etc). While they had been assimilated into the empire that ruled the Israelites, you could still cut this old family tension with a knife.

To make it worse, they apparently flourished in part at the expense of the countryside, whose resources they exploited. Economically, Tyre took bread away from a food-rich Galilee while Galileans went hungry (see Acts 12:20). To connect the dots with my opening discussion about dogs, there is reason to believe they had a popular proverb about not giving food to their children first and then letting dogs eat the crumbs. In their proverb, the dogs were likely the Jewish people.

This is modern Israel and Palestine perhaps, with a history of land wars; if you like Appalachian history, maybe it’s the Hatfields and McKoys. Those aren’t perfect analogies, but I hope it captures the idea. The disciples would not have thought of them any more kindly than they did of Samaritans - and the disciples wanted to call down fire on Samaritan towns.

When this story begins, imagine how the disciples must have felt going into this territory with Jesus. This is not just a Gentile area, which poses problems for them staying ceremonially pure (I’m assuming they were still processing Jesus’ teaching on that). This is the enemy.[5] These are people who have caused suffering to them and their families.  The testing and highlighting of a woman’s faith in this story occurs in this context.

After Jesus left there, he went to the region of Tyre and Sidon (a Gentile region with some of Israel’s “most bitter enemies”[6]).[7]When he went into a house, he did not want anyone to know, but he was not able to escape notice. Instead, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him and came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek (Canaanite), of Syrophoenician origin.

She cried out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is horribly demon-possessed!” But Jesus did not answer her a word.  Then his disciples came and begged him, “Send her away,[8] because she keeps on crying out after us.”  So Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” [I have come to feed my children.]But she came and bowed down before him and said, “Lord, help me!”

 [He responded with a saying she recognized:][9] “Let the children be satisfied first[10], for it is not right to take the children’s bread and to throw it to the little household dogs.[11]” “Yes, that is true, Lord[12],” she replied, “but even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs that they make fall[13] from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered her, “Dear woman[14], your faith is great! Because you said this, you may go and let what you want be done for you. The demon has left your daughter.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.  She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

First, this story in context applauds Jesus as just and the woman as virtuous.

When we read other healing miracle stories, Jesus never treats someone who asks with disrespect. That gives us good reason to think that if this story comes across that way, we might be missing something important. This quote might be a little bit literature nerdy, but it matters to understand what’s happening here.

“[This story] fits a type common in ancient literature wherein a subject approaches their leader with a request, which is initially dismissed, but later conceded to. In the exchange, the leader is shone to be just and fair, and the subject is judged virtuous. Both receive public honor, a win-win situation which was uncommon in the zero-sum game of honor/shame that structured the ancient world’s social customs… this encounter fits a pattern whereby a ruler who had every social right to ignore a plea was nevertheless shown to be compassionate by acceding to his subject’s wishes.”[15]

This is where I do a brief aside about the importance of studying context. We want to hear and see what the first audience heard and saw as much as possible whenever reading Scripture. When seen in this light, what at first glance presents a rude and insulting Jesus talking to a demeaned woman is revealed instead as a scenario in which the worth of the woman and the goodness of Jesus are revealed.

A common saying was refurbished to show that though she is not one of the children of Israel and is not part of the fellowship around the table, her persistent request is rewarded and her character is applauded (no doubt much to the surprise of the disciples).[16]

“The dialogue presented the woman a chance to gain honor. She pursued the virtuous course, and with the occasion to speak (and model) uprightness publicly, she earned the highest prize in antiquity - honor. She also secured Jesus’ highest praise, “Woman you have great faith.”[17]

Second, this reveals a God whose compassion is scandalous.

Remember, he has just called out the Pharisees who drew really sharp lines between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, Jew and Gentile.

·    He heads to a Gentile place (ceremonially unclean) to recover from ministering to his own people.

·    It’s Canaanite folk: distant, idolatrous relatives; enemies (spiritually unclean)

·    It’s a place full of people who harmed his children (economic exploitation)

·    A woman approaches him in a culture where only men should do that (culturally offensive)

·    Odds are good that she had tried the gods of her people (which were part of the problem) so that wasn’t going to work. Jesus likely wasn’t her first resort, but he was the one to whom she turned now.

And then Jesus tells her that her faith is great. This, in contrast to the times Jesus has told his disciples that their faith was struggling. 

 It’s a great reminder that Jesus came to offer Himself and His Kingdom to all people groups, all statuses, all ethnicities, all levels of rich and poor, educated or uneducated, sick or healthy, happy or depressed, in-group or outcast.

Notice how quickly he sent his disciples out – first the 12, which we already saw, and soon the 70, and then the Great Commission into all the world. Part of their training, no doubt, was to watch him respond compassionately to those his disciples were least likely to feel compassionate toward. If first Samaritans and now Canaanite enemies have access to Jesus, then there are no untouchables, no one so unclean that God’s grace and truth cannot impact their lives, no sinner outside of the length of Jesus’ reach.

Later in Matthew’s gospel, we will hear a parable about a seemingly sketchy group invited to a wedding banquet after the invited guests fail to respond (22:1–14). All along, Jesus has been welcoming outsiders and disenfranchised people such as tax collectors, prostitutes, and “unclean” people. Who can come to Jesus? Anyone.

It’s a good reminder that the light of Christ shines into surprisingly dark places. No way did the disciples expect to go to Canaanite Tyre and find someone ready to kneel at the feet of Jesus.

This is why we never write off a people or a place. This is why we go into all the world to preach the gospel. We may be shocked at how hardened those with access to Jesus have become – and how ready are those who seem to us to be far from Him.

Third, even the crumbs of the gospel are amazing and good.

"Not of the children? True…. [but] one crumb of power and grace from Thy table shall cast the devil out of my daughter."(Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary)

I had not thought of that before studying this. Freeing someone from demonic possession is a crumb from the feast of the Kingdom. Remarkable. It’s a pretty incredible crumb. Of all the types of healing and deliverance recorded in Scripture, that seems like the ultimate example of God’s good power bringing healing from the bondage of spiritual wickedness in high places.

Other stories of signs and wonders that Jesus performs in us as recorded in Scripture and throughout history. We see all kinds of ‘crumbs’ that are good for the world. Matthew has recorded this story between the Feeding of the Five and Four Thousand, so talk of “bread” and “crumbs” brings to mind how the leftovers were collected after everyone in Jesus’ audience had eaten his or her fill.

The woman appeals to Jesus’ love and generosity: “All right. I am not one of your children at the table, but what’s on that table is good, and there’s more than enough on that table for everyone.” The Africa Bible Commentary notes, “By faith, she saw herself, as a Gentile, benefiting from the blessings of Israel.”

My sense is that she arrived and left a God-fearer[18] like Cornelius but not a worshipper of Jesus.[19]  I don’t think this is a conversion story. I think it’s a provision story, because it doesn’t stop Jesus from providing for her need from the Kingdom storehouse.  Consider this tory from the Talmud:

“There was a famine in the land, and stores of corn were placed under the care of Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, to be distributed to those only who were skilled in the knowledge of the Law. And, behold, a man… clamorously asked for his portion. The Rabbi asked him whether he knew the condition, and had fulfilled it, and then the supplicant changed his tone, and said, ‘Nay, but feed me as a dog is fed, who eats of the crumbs of the feast,’ and the Rabbi hearkened to his words, and gave him of the corn.”[20]

The language of crumbs and dogs was applied within the Jewish community; Jesus applied it to the Gentiles as well. Here, I think, is the fullness of the Gospel:

• Jesus came to earth to save, deliver and heal first in the hearts and souls of humanity and second in the entirety of a creation that groans as it awaits redemption.

• His life, death and resurrection have confirmed that the King has arrived to establish His Kingdom in the midst of fallen empires.

• The church establishes outposts, oasis…es, fighting spiritual principalities and powers, and taking cups of water and Living Water to the spiritually and physically thirsty; bread and the Bread of Life to the spiritually and physically hungry, clothes and clothes of righteousness to the physically and spiritually naked; practical provision to the economically poor and riches of Christ to the spiritually bankrupt; doctors and the Great Physician to the physically and spiritually sick; declaring freedom to those in spiritual bondage and working for freedom for the physically oppressed.[21]

• Jesus, the Bread of Life, the fountain of Living Water, offers the nourishment of life everlasting, with even the crumbs and the sips of his grace and goodness pointing toward the deep, deep love of Jesus.

The Gospel begins with God so loved the world that He gave His son, and whoever believes on him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).  The Good News does not end there. God is at work through Jesus mending all that is broken. And when that happens, it’s a signpost pointing toward Jesus. The Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven touches every part of life. Nothing is outside of its scope. It changes our hearts and then guides our hands.  “The least of these” around us should be rejoicing when Jesus brings us sinners into his family, because that means their lives are about to get better. These crumbs leave a trail that points to the feast.

But…they are crumbs. Delicious, to be sure, but crumbs. But a trail of bread crumbs can lead hungry people to the Baker, right? What did Jesus tell the demon-possessed man after he healed him?  “Go and tell people about this crumb of the gospel.” Crumbs remind people that there is a feast. To where do the crumbs lead?

·    “The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” John 6:33

·    “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’” John 6:35.

·    “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” (John 6:51)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[1] NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible

[2] (https://www.thedodo.com/9-touching-epitaphs-ancient-gr-589550486.html)

[3] Here’s a concise overview of dog ownership in Judaism. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/judaism-dogs/

[4] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Of The New Testament

[5] She was a descendent of those seven nations of Canaan. (Pulpit Commentary)

[6] Per Josephus (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament)

[7] Elijah had also helped a non-Jewish woman in this area (1 Kings 17:8). 

[8] “The disciples used [the language of] releasing someone from prison or from a debt…or a painful condition. Likely, they were not asking that Jesus… grant her petition to keep her quiet.” https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/jesus-and-canaanite-woman/

[9] In his answer Jesus was probably quoting a popular proverb. (New Bible Commentary)

[10] “First” implies that this is not the final word, especially since the people of Israel just ate with much left over (Mark 6:42–43) (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[11] The Greek word includes the nuance pets.

[12] “Lord” seems to be a respectful title rather than a divine one. (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon)

[13] “Not merely the crumbs which by chance fall… but morsels surreptitiously dropped by the children to their pets.” (Expositor's Greek Testament) “[Jesus is] likely referring to how Greeks view dogs… that’s clearly how this Greek woman interprets Jesus’ words.”  https://www.rethinknow.org/jesus-and-the-canaanite-woman/

[14] The same word by which he addressed his mother, Mary. It’s a term of tenderness.

[15] From “The Canaanite Woman of Matthew 15” by Lynn H. Cohick, https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/the-canaanite-w.  “A similar story is told by Dio Cassius about a woman who calls out a request to the emperor Hadrian. At first he said he hadn’t the time, but when she declared “Cease, then, being emperor” he stopped and granted her a hearing.”

[16] https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/jesus-and-canaanite-woman/

[17] https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/the-canaanite-w

[18] “In the New Testament and early Christian writings, the Greek terms God-fearers and God-worshippers are used to indicate those Pagans who attached themselves in varying degrees to Hellenistic Judaism without becoming full converts…” “God-Fearer,” Wikipedia

[19] She does not identify herself as one of the children. Jesus doesn’t disagree. He doesn't say her faith has saved her as he does in some other places. He says her daughter will be healed.

[20] Ellicott’s Commentary For English Readers

[21] The early church modeled it: they helped not only the spiritually lost and sinfully broken by introducing them to the saving power of Jesus, they also addressed injustice by helping the poor, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned, the abandoned. They eventually built hospitals and schools and established economic safety nets.

The Next 50 Years

Have you ever seen those retro photographs where a current snapshot is put in front of an older one? They are a cool way of seeing the connectedness of the past while showing how much things change. Sometimes, we feel nostalgia for what’s been lost. Other times, we feel glad for what’s been gained.

“Remember” is used 167 times in the Bible (at least in the NIV). We see it both in the Old Testament and the New. Usually, it has to do with remembering events in order to remember that God was at work in the midst of those events.

“Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.  Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  

 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock.  He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you.  

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”  But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.”  Deuteronomy 8:11-18

 In Deuteronomy 32, God warns Moses that the Israelites will break their covenant with him. He tells Moses to write down a song of God’s presence (with all the interaction, faithfulness, and blessings and cursing of the covenant) and teach it to all the people so it will be a witness. One portion of the songs says:

“Remember the days of long ago; think about the generations past. Ask your father, and he will inform you. Inquire of your elders, and they will tell you.” Deuteronomy 32:7 

Here’s a daunting verse: 

“Remember and never forget how angry you made the LORD your God out in the wilderness.” Deuteronomy 9:7 

This is not a verse we see on coffee mugs or taped on bathroom mirrors. That’s a reference to the whole Golden Calf Episode, though Moses promptly lists four more places where they really made God angry because of their disobedience (“You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah…Kadesh Barnea.” 22-23). This was hardly a shining moment in Israelite history, but there it was. Nobody was allowed to dodge it.

When Jesus and disciples participated in what we call the Last Supper, Jesus said, “Keep doing this to remember me” (Luke 22:19).  

There are times we read about forgetting the former things, but this idea is often misunderstood. Here are the two verses I hear quoted the most:

·       “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:18-19

·       “…forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14

The writers were not urging people to develop amnesia. In both cases, it meant, “Don’t be distracted or become complacent because of previous success and blessing.” Isaiah was referring to good things, not bad ones (and actually tells them several verses later to “review the past for me”). Philippians is referring to good things in Paul’s life that could lead to self-righteousness, pride in personal accomplishments, and complacency.

Remembering the past is important for at least two reasons: our past clearly forms or informs who we are today, and our past, when carefully studied, will reveal that God was present and faithful (and He is worth remembering).

I’ve been reflecting on CLG’s 50 years. I have only been a part of 27 years of it, but I’ve been a part of many conversations about church history from those of you who lived it. Like all things, there are good and bad things that have made us who we are today.

·      Founded in the heart of the charismatic movement, CLG drew people who longed for a faith that felt alive, exciting and transformative. There was a freshness, a vibrancy, a sense of anticipation that perhaps they would tangibly see God at work through his Holy Spirit. For many whose faith felt dry and whose God felt distant, this was a game-changer. Who knew the Kingdom could be this alive? While our belief about the ongoing reality of the gifts of the Holy Spirit has not changed, the way in which these gifts are integrated into the corporate life of the church has. And we’ve seen spiritual fruit and growth then and now, because in then end, the Holy Spirit continuously moves in the children of God  

·      There was a time CLG was the church for holiday programs. We knew how to do a concert with all the bells and whistles, and I mean that in a good way. We were past the peak when Sheila and I moved here, but I got to play in the mall, and on a stage in the Open Space on Sunday morning during Cherry Festival, and here with not just a stage packed with people but a full orchestra pit as well. It was big, and beautiful, and loud, and God was glorified, and people worshipped through the gift of music. That has changed over time, because we have changed. New wine has found new wineskin.  And we learned that, bigger or smaller, the Lord inhabits the praise of His people.

·      There was a season where we did a lot of out-of-country missions: Mexico, Ukraine, Haiti, Nagaland, Jamaica. We helped to found churches, many of which are still going today. Some of you in here have been on a lot of mission trips and have supported missionaries from 30 years ago to this day. CLG’s legacy will ripple through generations and into eternity. For that matter, this church ran an elementary school for a long time as a ministry to the church families but also in the community. If you haven’t already, check out the pictures in the hallway. When the economy and our budget changed, we moved our focus more local: Touching Hearts, Thomas Judd, Single MOMM, Goodwill Inn, letting church plants begin in our building (4 so far), as well as others. There is something beautiful about being a part of the Kingdom in other countries and experiencing the global nature of the church. There is something beautiful about living out the Kingdom in our own communities, being the hands and feet of Jesus where we live. If God blesses us with another 50 years, I’m sure we will continue to see the ebb and flow of near and far.

·      We’ve had people attend here who have attended and never left, and we have had those for whom CLG was where God placed them for only a chapter or a couple chapters in their life.

·      We’ve had wonderful church business meetings and some not so wonderful.

·      We’ve had bulging bank accounts and empty ones.

·      We’ve had multiple services and one service, longer services and shorter services, baptisms, weddings, funerals, baby dedications, attempts at membership, revivals, concerts, chili cook offs, youth group overniters, banquets, garage sales, fundraisers, retreats, potlucks, fires…

·      And we’ve always been human. Image bearers who are works in progress, children of the Heavenly Father who are sometimes child-like and sometimes childish, placed  in a church community that is good, and difficult, and life-giving but sometimes draining, and it’s all part of God’s plan for our flourishing in His kingdom.

And what is the thread that runs through all of this? The constant, faithful presence of God.

·      The God who gives good gifts to His children, and He has given many of those gifts to and through this church over the years.

·      The God who takes the ashes of our firebombed lives and replaces them with beauty; we have seen many become spiritually beautiful within this community over the years.

·      The God whose strength is perfected in our weakness.

·      The God who continually transforms his children into the image of Jesus, working maturity and growth in us for our good and the good of those around us, to the glory of God. That is a long, hard, and beautiful process.

·      The God who takes what Satan intends for ill and turns it to His good purposes, over and over again.

·      The God who has sustains us and loved us just as we are and too much to leave us that way. He often uses His people to as his voice in that process. That balance of when to listen and when to speak, when to just be present and when to intervene, when to absorb and when to confront. It’s just messy and unpredictable, and we pray for Holy Spirit to guide us, and pray that God’s love covers a multitude of not just sins, but an abundance of stupidity.

·      The God who will never leave us or forsake us.

On this God, our hope rests.

On a personal level, CLG has played such a vital role in the life of my family. Sheila and I are grateful beyond words for what we found here – well, not everything we found here in our 27 years, - but this is the cool thing: God used this church, through the people in this church, to minister to us in profound ways. And for that we are profoundly grateful.

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As pastor, I follow in the footsteps of pastors who loved God, loved His word, and shepherded this church in their own unique ways based on their skills and passions. Most recently it was Ted, who has been so vital in teaching and modeling for me what service in this role looks like.

And for those who are here, the further back your attendance goes, the more memories you have of things that you feel defined CLG over the years. If you’ve been here for a while, you have navigated a lot of changes, some that have felt good and some that have been hard. However,  there’s probably something that sticks in your mind about your experience with these first 50 years. That leads me here:

50 years from now, what do I hope people remember about CLG from  2023 - 2073?

I’ve had lots of things banging around in my head on this one, but I kept coming back to the idea that it’s not as much about what we will do as who we will be.  

So, what kind of people does God intend for us to be?  As I was thinking about that this week, I kept coming back to 1 Corinthians 13.  Paul concludes the chapter by saying,

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

So, let’s chart a course built on faith, hope and love.

FAITH

This is a trust in Jesus that changes our life. This starts with believing the truth about who Jesus is as seen in the biblical ‘creeds’ about Jesus.

55 AD: “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are
all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” (1
Corinthians 8:6)

·55 AD “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also
received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to
Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five
hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive,
though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-7)

·62 AD “Though he was in the form of God, did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 
And being found in human form he humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has
highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.” (Philippians 2:6-11)

·67 AD “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of  our
religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit,
seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the
world, taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)

Faith starts with believing the biblical ‘creeds’ about Jesus, but it’s not just thoughts in our head. It’s reordering our life with the help of the Holy Spirit so that who we are demonstrates the life-changing reality of who Jesus is.  We are not children of empire; we are children of God. Our culture does not get to tell us who we are or how we are to be. The Kingdom does.

The Bible calls us ambassadors: representatives, icons on the world’s computer screen so that when people ‘click’ on us, we reveal that Christ in us is the hope of glory.

FROM THIS FAITH COMES HOPE

·      that sin does not master us

·      that forgiveness and grace are real things

·      that all that is sick in us can be healed

·      that our history is not our destiny

·      that God can bring beauty from the ashes of our lives

·      that we can be made well, and (!) even whole!

·      that there really is a community of people united in Jesus who can both know us and love us

·      that evil will never have the last word

·      that there will be a new heaven and earth

·      that for the children of God, all that is bad will be undone

·      that one day, God will wipe away all tears from our eyes

·      that one day we will see Jesus face to face

HOPEFUL FAITH IS EXPRESSED IN LOVE

How does God plan for who you are in Christ to be expressed? There are a lot of details, but one core value.

This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.“ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15: 8-12)

We looked at the last verse in 1 Corinthians 13. Here’s famous verses from the  beginning of 1 Corinthians 13 (from multiple translations and word studies).

·      Love patiently endures 

·      Love is gentle and consistently kind

·      Love is not envious when others are blessed

·      Love does not strut or boast; it is not proudly inflated by its own importance.

·      Love is not unshapely (unseemly or improper); it takes on a form that is compelling and attractive

·      Love does not dishonor others with shame or disrespect

·      Love does not selfishly seek its own honor or attempt to “get what’s mine”

·      Love does not fly off the handle with anger or quickly take offense

·      Love does not keep a punch list of wrongs it has endured

·      Love does not delight in unrighteousness or injustice

·      Love does not cheer when others are harmed (doesn't revel when others grovel)

·      Love celebrates honesty, truth and righteousness. 

·      Love always gives a safe place of shelter, bearing or covering[1] the baggage of others

·      Love entrusts people to God (“always trusts/believes all things”)

·      Love remains hopeful and faithful during difficult times[2]  

·      Love bears incredible loads without breaking

·      Love never stops loving well.

This, I hope, is what someone 50 years from now says about CLG: “See how they loved God and others.”

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[1] but not enabling

[2] even if that happens from a distance

Harmony #41: Clean and Unclean (Mark 7:14-23; Matthew 15:10-20)

Last week, we read how Jesus called out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They were offended at the disciples’ ceremonial uncleanliness because they didn’t wash their hands before they ate; meanwhile, they dishonored their parents by exploiting loopholes in their traditions.

The first thing Jesus did was to address their hypocrisy. Now he returns to the question of what it means to be clean or unclean.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand. There is nothing outside of a person that can defile him by going into his mouth. Rather, it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles him.”

Now when Jesus had left the crowd and entered the house, the disciples came to him and said, “Do you know that when the Pharisees heard this saying they were offended?”

And he replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father did not plant will be uprooted.  Leave them! They are blind guides. Someone who is blind cannot lead another who is blind, can he? Won’t they both fall into a pit?”

Peter said to Jesus, “Explain this parable to us.” Jesus said, “Even after all this, are you still so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person’s mouth from outside cannot defile him? For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.”[1] (This means all foods are clean.)

“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a person. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder,  adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, false testimony, slander, pride, and folly. These are the things that defile a person; it is not eating with unwashed hands that defiles a person.”

* * * * *

I have two points today. The first has to do with evangelism.

“Jesus’ replacement of ritual purity with purity of the heart prepares the way for his ministry in impure Gentile regions. In the book of Mark, this is the last story before Jesus begins to reach the Gentiles. He is going to be in impure places with impure people… he is not going to be made impure by being in ceremonially unclean places.”[2]

I love this aspect. Jesus was breaking down barriers of judgment and disdain for the “other.”

Before, to be ritually pure, there was no way a Jewish person could have spent any kind of meaningful time with a Gentile. There were just too many ways that one could become impure by touching so many things, or eating particular food, or not washing properly. Not only was it a huge barrier to meaningful connection, it must have surely sent a message about the status of the other person as a human being. “I can’t be around you. You’re gross.” There’s no way to soften that blow.

But Jesus, and then the writers of the New Testament, made it clear that the “us vs. them” mentality needed to stop. The original plan was for the children of Abraham to bless the entire world.  They were pretty good at letting immigrants and foreigners into Israel (they didn’t have to join Judaism as a faith, but they had to leave their idols and obey the civil laws and cleanliness laws). But… they were not good at all at going into all the world and telling the good news of Yahweh. Over time, the traditions that arose made it almost impossible.

So, that needed to change. Here’s Paul.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, [Wolverines or Spartans, locals or fudgies, natural born citizen or immigrant, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, no Baptist or Reformed or Pentecostal,] for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth… 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. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside… the [ceremonial] law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  

17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.   21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:11-22)

 I love how Jesus and Paul are knocking down snobbery or superiority. There will be no “turning up our nose” when we go into all the world and preach the gospel. What we will see instead is that every person is a potential member of this household, a potential part of the church that rises to become a dwelling whose cornerstone is Jesus and in which God lives by his spirit.  That is a message of hope for those without hope in the world.

* * * * *

The second point is a basic point of correction for Jesus’ listeners: what does not enter the heart cannot make a person unclean. Food does not enter the heart. It might make you unhealthy, and there are good reasons to consider the ethics involving what we eat, but that’s different from being spiritually unclean.[3] Adam Clarke summarizes well:

In the heart… the principles and seeds of all sin are found. And iniquity is always conceived in the heart before it be spoken or acted.

In other words, what comes out of the mouth reveals what’s in our hearts. And if our words are full of sinful corruption, it reveals a heart that is full of sinful corruption as well. 

Why would our hearts be in this state, especially if we claim to be followers of Jesus? I think it’s because our diet is a problem. Remember, Jesus is still riffing on the narrative that started with him doing miracles with physical bread, then telling his audience He is the bread they need to eat, and now coming back to the diet analogy again.

Our spiritual diet matters. A lot. We are constantly feeding our hearts and minds. We can’t go through the day without that happening. And we get to make choices about what we are going to feed it.

An old Cherokee said to his grandson, “A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

That not a quote from the Bible, but it’s a pretty good biblical principle. To go back to last week’s sermon on hypocrisy, this is why his audience needed the bread that was Jesus. Our hearts need the Bread of Life. We need spiritually pure and perfect nourishment for our heart, soul, and mind, so that what comes out from our heart, soul and mind is good.

God’s Word is described often as various kinds of nourishment:

·      milk (1 Peter 2:2)

·      meat (1 Corinthians 3:2)

·      bread (Deuteronomy 8:3; Job 23:12)

·      sweeter than honey (Psalm 119:103).

Biblical writers had a lot to say about consuming God and His Word.

“When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, LORD God Almighty” (Jeremiah 15:16)

“Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

“I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” (Job 23:12)

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).

“Labor not for the meat which perishes, but for that meat which endures unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you …” (John 6:27)

I like this summary from Abigail Dodds:

He has prepared food for us. The food he has prepared is himself. He serves us himself through his holy word—the Bible. The feast he’s invited us to is not a potluck. We do not bring a side dish to share, rather the Son of Man came to serve, not be served. We bring nothing but our hunger, our deep need for him. And the Lord says to us, “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps. 34:8)[4]

So how do we feast on Jesus? David Nasser, in his devotional "A Call to Die," states that spiritual eating requires "intention, selection, and effort".[5] I want to build from his material to talk about this a bit more.

Intention: When we don’t eat well or we skip a meal, it can have an impact on how we fell. We might feel nauseous, shaky, bloated, light-headed, maybe depressed, or get ‘hangry’.  It's the body's way of letting us know that we either didn’t choose the right nourishment or didn’t choose enough. For optimal health, you need optimal nutrition.

If I want to eat well, then I must go places where nutritious options exists and avoid places in which junk food abounds. If I am hungry, I can’t go to Billy’s Deep Fried Burgers and Twinkies and think that I will eat well.  Likewise, if I want a spiritually healthy diet, I must go to places or be with people who offer me spiritual healthy options and avoid people and places that offer me junk. Paul wrote,

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

Notice he didn’t limit this to Scripture. While Scripture is the core of our diet, through common grace God has put good things all around us all the time.

It’s impossible for us to live in the world and not ingest things that are anywhere from junky to toxic. But we can choose a lifestyle that immerses us into spiritual food forests where food is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and grounded on a foundation of the truth of God’s Word.

Selection: We have to make conscious choices. If we are not purposeful, we will wander further and further from true nourishment. I’ve noticed that the more fried chicken I eat, the more I want fried chicken. The more I snack on Cheetos, the more all other lesser snacks fade into the background. I didn’t drink pop for a long time; when I had a couple Coke Zeros, they started calling to me with their sweet, bubbly song. And, yeah, I responded.

But that’s the way it’s supposed to work, right? I don’t think it’s a secret that the food industry knows how to create cravings in us for salties and sweets.

If we are not purposeful, we will increasingly ignore healthy but overlooked broccoli because it doesn’t trigger desire like an Onion Blossom does. If you are like me, I select vegetables because I know that they will lead to better health, not because I necessarily want them. But the more we keep them in the rhythm of our diet, the more we begin to desire those instead.

I’ve noticed this with salad. I was driving back from downstate the other week and I stopped at Ponderosa in Clare - FOR THE SALAD BAR. How did this happen? After my heart attack, I started eating salad not because I wanted to but because I had to. Lo and behold, I picked up a hankerin’ for salad. With ranch dressing, obviously.

In the same way, once you begin to "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8) it changes your palate. You develop a spiritual dietary momentum that allows you desire more and more of the healthy while avoiding more and more of the unhealthy.  

One more thing about selection. We need variety. Biologically, if we only eat a small variety of food we will deprive our bodies of necessary fuel. We need a range of carbs, fats and proteins to get everything we need for a healthy body. The same is true with how we study Scripture. We need to read the depth and breadth of the Bible. It tells a unified story.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

In addition, I think it’s important to study widely in church traditions throughout history and across nations and denominations. I have been challenged and enlightened so many times as I have broadened the community input in my study of the Bible.[6]

Effort: Fast food is a microcosm for a reality in the United States: convenience in king. It’s easy (and delightful) to swing by Pizza Hut to get a deep dish thin garlic-coated cheese-filled crust with all the meats.  It takes work, time, and commitment to make a healthy meal at home.

This is just as true in the spiritual sense.  The classic disciplines are the spiritual foundations for health:

·      Worship (not just a lifestyle, but focused times of praise)

·      Studying God's Word (in depth, in community)

·      Prayer (don’t overthink it. Just do it J)

·      Service (setting aside time to practice agape love)

·      Fellowship (honest, transparent life together in Christ)

These are the staples of the spiritually healthy diet. 

These things take effort.  The nourishment is life-giving, but it takes purposeful effort on our behalf.  And since God will equip us for what that to which He calls us, God's spirit will empower this effort (II Timothy 3:16-17).

The Word you read has to "become flesh" in you. It has to become part of you. As it nourishes you, it will change you by changing the way you see yourself and the way you see others.

This, I think, is the path to freedom from hypocrisy. If we really consume the Word of God, it will change us.

 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. (James 1:22-25)

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[1] “A variant reading, however, has a… participle that would modify the noun “latrine” immediately preceding it. If this is the original reading, the statement affirms that the food has become clean in the process of elimination. This reading surprisingly fits the rabbinic laws of clean and unclean. According to the Mishnah, excrement is not ritually impure. Rabbi Jose is said to ask: “Is excrement impure? Is it not for purposes of cleanliness?” This startling judgment may be the key to Jesus’ argument. Jesus, with droll humor, may be exposing the illogic of the Pharisee’s arguments. If food defiles a person, as the Pharisees claim, why do they not regard it as unclean when it winds up in the latrine? Defilement must come from some other source than food.” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Of The New Testament)

[2] NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible

[3]  “Jesus will keep using the image of food to talk about what feeds our hearts; soon, we will see his warning to avoid the impure “yeast” that defiles the hearts of Herod and the Pharisees.” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[4] “What Our Physical Diet Says about Our Spiritual Appetite.” Abigail Dodds

[5] I found this at “The Healthy Spiritual Diet.” http://www.newhopefree.org/viralfaith/2011/06/healthy-spiritual-diet.html

[6] Start with Reading While Black by Esau McCauley for a great example of how this works, or Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World, or Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes, both by E. Randolph Richards and Richard James. If you use Bible Gateway to study, be sure to check the Orthodox Study Bible or the Africa Bible Commentary for some global variety.