Jesus and the Gentiles | Christadelphians at Boston

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Original URL Sunday, March 2, 2025

Transcript

Perfect. Yeah, a few months ago I did a series like Jesus's interaction with different groups of people, like the scribes and the Pharisees.

We talked about the Ascians as well, Jesus and the Samaritans, we talked about that type of thing. So different groups of people, how did Jesus interact with these different groups of people? I thought it was interesting, just some of the historical background of that kind of stuff, some cultural issues as well. Why were the scribes so important in ancient Israel? Well, we went through that, right? There was a very important job in the ancient world and in Judaism as well. In fact, we wouldn't have the scriptures that we have today without these faithful scribes that copy down all of the different fragments and scrolls and stuff that they had. So we owe them a debt of gratitude. And it is through those types of individuals that God kept alive his gospel message to all mankind. Anyways, so today I'd like to, I think we can get through everything. I have a little multimedia presentation as well towards the end, five or six minutes, nothing crazy. But I want to take a look at Jesus and his interactions with the Gentiles. There were a lot of important interactions that Jesus had with Gentile believers in a

There was a certain type of Jewish elitism in the religious world. They looked down upon Gentiles. A lot of people thought that they were like animals, subhuman. And there's a certain type of thinking that has passed down through the ages in some of Jewish writings as well, particularly in the Talmud. They don't have a lot of nice things to say about non -Jewish people, Christians, that type of thing. And of course, the confrontation and the enmity between early day Christians and the Jews obviously is very well documented. But anyways, we know that Jesus was sent, because the gospels tell us this, he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In fact, Jesus says that in his interactions with the Syrophoenician woman that we're going to take a look at in a little more detail. He says, I'm sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That's my first priority. But as we're going to find, brothers and sisters, just because you have a first priority doesn't mean that you can't preach the gospel of hope and salvation to all mankind, which ultimately, as we know, is Jesus' ministry. Yes to the Jews, the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. But ultimately, it was to bring the gospel message of hope through Jesus Christ to all of mankind. And we're going to find out, and we've talked about this before, how God is going to use the lay of the land or the realities of society at that time to bring about the purpose of

spreading the gospel message of hope, not just to the Jews, but to every single person on the planet. So if we look at the Old Testament, are there instances where God kind of foreshadows this idea of bringing the gospel message, the hope of Israel, to all of mankind? If you're saying yes to yourself, you are correct. All right. We don't have to look at all of them, but let's take a look at a couple of these. A lot of them are found in Isaiah, but there are others as well. But in Isaiah, the second chapter, we have recorded, This is actually reiterated as well in Micah, the fourth chapter. It's almost verbatim. So two times in the Old Testament, through prophetic words, God is telling us that there will be a time when all Gentiles, all peoples, will have the gospel message preached to them. Okay? Keep that in mind. Let's take a look at Isaiah 56. Yeah, and God is talking about covenants and relationships, that type of thing. And he begins the chapter, Thus saith the Lord, keep ye judgment, and do justice. For my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Verse six, also the sons of strangers that join themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant. Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. Sound familiar? Right? This is actually something that Jesus is going to quote when he does what? Cleans the temple out of where? The court of the Gentiles.

The Jewish, you know, shop owners and people that still, you know, had their stalls, they had it set up in the court of the Gentiles. Gentiles had no place to pray. They had no place to be joyful as Isaiah here speaks. And so this is what Jesus does. He clears that away. He gives space within his father's house for Gentiles.

Not just for Jews anymore. Jesus clears that out. He clears that understanding away, that thought process. No longer just for the Jews. It's for the Gentile as well. And this is something that Jesus quotes from. He quotes from Isaiah the 56th chapter, and he also quotes from Jeremiah, right? That first part where he says, he says, you know, my house of prayer, my father sells the house for all, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. And then he quotes from Jeremiah and says, but you have made it a den of thieves. So I just, I love the way Jesus' mind works, right? He's always going back to the Old Testament, to the prophets, and he's pulling things together, and he's really just living it, right? But you have made it a den of thieves. And just, you know, imagine the corruption, right? You know, big talk today in today's world about corruption, right? You know, there was corruption there as well. You know, people, they were ripping off the people. You know, wouldn't have to get into it. And then let's just take a look at Matthew the 8th chapter. In verse 11. Yeah, so this is actually part of his, you know, he's going to heal the centurion's servant. And this is what he says afterward. So that was the lesson that Jesus is putting across to the Jews and the Gentiles that saw this. Right? People are going to come from all, from the east and the west, and they will be in the kingdom. But the children of the kingdom, the Jews that rejected Christ, they will be what? Cast out into outer darkness. So there is, in this interaction, there is preferential treatment given to the Gentiles that believe, that believe in the gospel over the Jews that were just born into it. Didn't, you know, didn't John the, maybe, I can't remember anyways, you know, Christ said, you know, they were, they were boasting that they, we have Abraham as our father. Right? And Christ said, you know, God can raise up, you know, children from these stones if he wanted to. And so, you know, that was one of the big things that Jesus wanted to get out of, you know, his mind was this elitism, like they had, you know, the oracles of God. Paul talks about this. They were given the oracles of God. The Jewish people were the vehicle by which God exposes the world to his gospel message. Right? They were, they were the chosen people. Not because they were better or greater or anything like that. God actually says that. You were the least. You were nothing. And I drew you out of Egypt and out of the wilderness to save you.

And so they became complacent with that. And there was corruption. And this is some of the things that Jesus is, you know, was addressing with the religious Jewish leaders at this time. All right. That is a picture right there on the right. Too bad, you know, Jason isn't here. That is a picture of the Galilee. Beautiful area. We'll, if we have some time, we'll take a look at a short little video on this. But we're up north, by the way, and we're going to take a look at this. We're up north. We're not down by Jerusalem. And we're going to find, brothers and sisters, we actually look at the gospels. This is where Jesus spends the majority of his time, 60 to 70 percent of all his interactions with people are going to be up in the north. And there is, that's an important aspect of this, as we're going to see. All right. In Israeli history, in Israelite history, Butchi, did good things come from the north? No. Bad things always came from the north. And where's Jesus going? To the north. Right. So there's a spiritual battle that is starting to kind of, you know, begin, so to speak. All right. Okay. So who were the first Gentiles that Jesus interacted with? All right. The wise men from the east. Now, there has been some, you know, scholarly, you know, were the wise men Jewish? Were they Jews that lived in that area? Most people say no. Most people say that they were Persians. Right? And they were, I've read different types of things, but they, Persian priests from Zoroastrianism, which was, they also had, they were a monotheistic group of people. Remember, they saw the star in the sky, that what was the star doing? It was moving. Right? Remember? They followed the star to the house where Jesus was. Okay? So already, if we take, if we take for fact or for truth that these, the first people, these, the wise men, Jesus is going to interact with. I mean, did he interact with you as a little baby? But they, they were so drawn to the star and to Jesus that they took this 800, 900 mile, you know, journey to see what the story is. They were looking for this. Right? So already, already, with the birth of Jesus, we see faithful Gentiles putting their faith into practice. Not just like, hey, take a look at that star. It's moving. I don't know. And, you know, they had all of this information and they used that information to take this massive journey. So faith in works. It's a perfect example of faith in works. Right? They had faith that this star meant something. They also, you know, God was in contact with them too. Remember in a dream? They were going to go back to Herod. Herod was trying to trick them. And God says, look, don't go, go a different way. This, this guy is looking for destruction. Right? So in, in, in Jesus to Egypt. Right? Remember that's, let's take a look at that. In Matthew, the second chapter. We sometimes forget about this. But Jesus, you know, spent some time in Egypt. He was around Egyptians. So you want to talk about being around Gentiles. Well, you couldn't get any more Gentile-y. That's a word. Just made it up. Okay? Then the Egyptians, I mean, they're going back thousands and thousands of years of polytheism just kind of rooted in this, in this land. Now remember in the ancient world as well, your land and the God were connected. All right? So remember the God, you know, there's a little instance about God, you know, one of Israel's enemies saying, you know, Yahweh is just a God of the hills. Right? We're going to take the, we're going to take Israel down into the valleys. We'll beat him in the valley because Yahweh is just strong up in the mountains. He's up in the hills. Come to find out that Yahweh was actually strong everywhere. Right? I think it's in 1st and 2nd Kings. It's actually a pretty funny story. But anyways, Jesus is around Egyptians. Now, he lived most likely in like a Jewish community down in Egypt because there were Jewish communities still in Egypt, actually doing very well. But he went, he went down there. So he's going to be exposed to different types of people. Egypt just wasn't filled with Egyptians. It was filled with a lot of different people, Jews being one of them, Greeks. There were Greeks there, people from all over the Mediterranean world, all over from North Africa as well, down south in what is in Kush, Ethiopia. He's going to see, you know,

other peoples up and down that area. What's modern day Somalia? People came up to Egypt. So listen, he's going to come across all different kinds of people, all different kinds of ideas as well. All right? So this is Jesus, you know, kind of first taste of the world, so to speak. Where is he? He's down in Egypt, right? Out of Egypt? Well, I call my son. Okay? So that's great. So along those lines, eventually, you know, Joseph and Mary, and of course Jesus, make their way back to Nazareth after Herod dies. But, you know, remember Joseph was still kind of a little uneasy. He didn't want to kind of stay in the Bethlehem area. So he heads up to Nazareth, kind of the safe area. He knew the area. He grew up there as well. And so, you know, Nazareth, I think we did, we talked about like the Galilee. I think I did a series on this, the Galilee. You know, Galilee was kind of a rough and tumble spot. Nazareth was kind of a, it was a very busy town, kind of like a small city. People were coming and going. It was industry as well.

But also it had a reputation as, you know, being kind of, you know, a scrappy area, right? They always looked down upon the Galileans. All right. So when Matthew 4, yeah, the 23rd chapter, I'm sorry, Matthew 4, 23rd verse. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame went throughout all Syria. Those are what? Those are Gentiles, right? Syrians. His fame went throughout all of Syria. And they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with diverse diseases and torments, and those who were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy, and He healed them. And there followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Decapolis and from Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond Jordan. So those are a lot of places that He's mentioning. But primarily, it's going to be a northern Israel area

where Jesus is going to do His preaching. And it's mentioned at the beginning of His ministry He's healing Gentiles, brothers and sisters. He's healing Syrians. His fame is being spread to Syria. And what did the Syrians do? The Syrians are like, we have a guy here that can heal. And so all of these Gentiles, non-Jews,

come down to be healed by Jesus. I think that's a very powerful point, that one of the first groups of people that Jesus reaches out to to heal are Gentiles. They're Gentiles. They're Syrians. And so Decapolis is up north as well. I'm going to show you a couple maps to kind of orientate ourselves to what we're dealing with here and why it's so important that Jesus is starting His ministry up in the north. He doesn't start it down in Jerusalem. He doesn't.

He starts it up north. And there's a reason why He's going to do that. You know, Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem. Certainly, every Passover, Jesus is going to be there as an observant Jew. But the majority of His teaching is up north. All right, here is an early… First of all, is there any comments, questions about the first couple slides? All right. Jen, great to see you. Okay. This is a map of major areas of Jewish settlement, the diaspora, until the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. So this is before the destruction of AD 70, which there was a forced diaspora, right? They were taken captive to Rome. And when you go there to Rome, when you look at the Colosseum,

Jewish slaves built that with Jewish money. All right? So that's where, when you look at the Colosseum,

that's where they got the money to build this massive structure, was from the destruction of Jerusalem. They took all that booty, all that gold, you know, millions and millions of dollars' worth of gold and other things they took to Rome. You can actually go see…

It's called… Just had his name. No, no, not him. Titus. Titus is a triumphal arch. You can actually see the Jews going into captivity and Roman soldiers carrying the lampstand, the menorah. They're carrying that away. Anyways, so this is before that time, and you can already see that the Jews have kind of spread out throughout the Mediterranean, but also through the Middle East as well. Take a look at all of the different circles, right? Circles are kind of major areas of Jewish settlement. Look at that. Down south in what's today what? Ethiopia, down there. Down on the tip of what's today Yemen. There's Yemeni Jews living today. All right? You know, fun little fact that the Jews in Mohammed were allies for a portion of time until they turned on each other, and so this is where some of the hatred with Islam and the Jews come from. You can see a big circle there in Egypt, right? A lot of people in Egypt. Carthage as well to the left of that, right? Cyrena, Tunis, all of these. So this is kind of where they're going. They're going up to Rome, of course. So the Jews have settlements everywhere. They have communities everywhere. Everywhere. And, you know, this is really, you know, this was by choice, by the way. You know, it wasn't a whole lot of times there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity in this area, and there was a small group of elites that, you know, kind of controlled things. And so, you know, like any other human being, they had families, they looked at other opportunities. Well, where we can go? Well, you know, Uncle Hiram, he's living in Tripoli. He's got a good little business going on. Maybe you want to go there. Yeah, I think so, sure. And so that's how it went. Same with America, right? The Irish, because of a lot of different things, they immigrated to America, right? The same is true of Germans and all, you know, other peoples as well. Mexican Americans, the same type of thing. All right, this is pretty interesting. From 70 to 500, you can see the diaspora, too. Where the Jews went. You know, from AD 7, you can see that the majority of their travels or where they're going is Europe. They are going to Europe, and they're going to move up into the central areas of Europe. And there's going to be considerable antagonism

between Jews and Christians during this time. We've talked about that. So everything's going towards Europe, right? And that's understandable. That's where the wealth was at this time. The wealth and opportunity, the closer you got to Rome, the more opportunities you had for success, commercial success, that type of thing, okay? All right, this I found very interesting. Now, this is the diaspora, European-Jewish diaspora from 1946 to 1951. You can see, obviously, this is after World War I. This is after the Holocaust. This is after the destruction of World War I, particularly in Germany, but also in Russia. Millions and millions of Jews are going to lose their lives. And so the majority of them, if you see up in the left-hand corner, a lot of them are going to go to the United States during this time. But we're going to put limitations on how many Jews we can let in. They went to Canada. The majority of them are going to go to the United States. Some of them go down to Argentina. There's a community down in Argentina, a considerable community down in Argentina. Some of them will go to Australia as well. Mostly what? Mostly English-speaking countries outside of Brazil. It looks like a very small amount of Brazil, but a good amount to Antarctica, Argentina. Thank you. Now, the bigger one is really interesting. Well, you can see that the majority of the people here are going to go to Israel. All right? And that makes perfect sense, because right around this time, Israel, there's really pressure being put upon the world to give the Jews a homeland where they can go to be safe, where they kind of control their destiny. And this is where the majority of them went. So anyways, this is another example of God kind of using the lay of the land, the history, the actions of that time period to bring about his purpose. And the purpose, obviously, here was the reestablishment of Israel. And after they got independence in 48, and then the War of Independence from 48 to 49, once they won their independence through wars with the Arab nations, the floodgates of immigration opened up too. And they're like, OK, now we have a stable area where we can go. So I just found that interesting. Jews throughout history have always been moving around, always, to different areas. They're not afraid to travel. All right. So just again, we'll talk about this very briefly. Galilee was different from the Judah, Judea, Jerusalem area. More non-Jews in the area. They were mixed people. Different ethnicities were found up in the north. It was like a hodgepodge of different types of people. It was much more homeogenous down in Jerusalem. You didn't have a whole lot of people from other ethnicities living in and around Jerusalem. Today's a little different, but it's kind of like, why would a Christian live in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem? Well, they would. And why would a Jew live in the Christian quarter? Well, they wouldn't. They would live in the Jewish quarter. And so this is really kind of like in a microcosm what was going on. There was a whole area of the Samaritans where the Samaritans lived that almost was like a buffer between what was going on up in the Galilee and what was going on down in Jerusalem. The Samaritans obviously were hated by the Jews. Samaritans hated the Jews too. And so there was no love lost between the two of them, which is why Jesus gives his very famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Again, Jesus using a Gentile as an example of faith, works, and love. It was ruled by Herod's sons opposed to Judea in Jerusalem, which was direct Roman rule. The Romans wanted to control this area by themselves. We're not playing any more games. Galilee was a very fertile area. Excellent fishing. It still is today. Considered backward and religiously lax.

And then this one's always my favorite. They were made fun of by their very thick Galilean accent. And we know that's the case because Peter exposed himself by

speaking right around the fire. I know not the man. You sound like a Galilean, sir. Anyways, another picture of the Galilee. You can see it's very nice. I think in my talks with Jason, this is one of his favorite areas. My dad actually loved the Galilee as well. All right. Where do we have the time? I don't know, people. All right.

The beginning of his ministry, as we know, and we're not going to turn to it, but the beginning of his ministry begins with him turning to Isaiah, the 61st chapter, and the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. What a way to start, right?

And so he begins his ministry. But part of that, part of that sermon that he gives to begin his ministry is all about the faith of Gentiles in the Old Testament and the lack of faith of the Jews in the Old Testament. And he calls all men, not all me, all men to repentance, and he uses two examples of faithful Gentiles whose faith exceeded the faith of the Jews at that time. So let's take a look at this in particular. In the fourth chapter, Isaiah 61, he reads, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He hath anoint me to preach the gospel of the poor, so on and so forth, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And so he says, and he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Okay, so that's a pretty radical statement, right? I just fulfilled this script, this 500, 600-year-old prophecy. Guess what, guys? I just fulfilled it. They're like, what? It's the beginning of this confrontation. They're giving Jesus a stinker. Like, what's this guy doing? Because they say, is not this Joseph's son? Who's this guy? Where did he get all this in this scriptural intelligence? He's making such incredible sense. Those gracious words, how he spoke, right?

And so they didn't really take to him, right? And so he said in verse 24, No profit is accepted in his own country. And this is exactly what he's talking about, right? And he uses, I tell you the truth, many widows,

many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But none of them was Elias sent, save unto Septra, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel at the time of Elias, the prophet. And none of them was cleansed, a Naaman, the Syrian. Those are two Gentiles, brothers and sisters, okay? Elijah didn't go to any widow, any Jewish widow at this time, an Israelite woman. He went to a Gentile widow. Jesus uses that as an example. And the same with Naaman as well. Naaman was a Syrian general, captain of the Syrian army, was a sworn enemy of Israel. And in fact, you could make a connection that there were widows, many widows during this time, because of the Syrian army. People were dying because there was a famine and the Syrians were coming down, taking whatever they wanted. And so it was a very trying time. And it was these two individuals, brothers and sisters, that God saved. They were Gentiles. So immediately, as he begins his ministry to the Jewish people, he's already planted the seed of the Gospel message to the Gentiles. He starts his ministry off by laying the groundwork for it. It isn't something that he just threw. Oh, you know what? I think I should stop preaching to the Gentiles. He preached to the Gentiles from the very beginning, from the very beginning. All right.

All right, so this is, we talked about the north, okay? And we know that in Jewish history, the north was a bad place. All destruction of Jerusalem and of the land came from the north. The Assyrians came from the north. The Syrians came from the north as well. Antiochus Epiphanes, right, destruction of Jerusalem during the like 300, somewhere around there, he came from the north as well. From what area does gold come from? What's he? The north, baby, okay. So that's again, the north is where evil lives. The north, okay. In fact, Jesus is going to go up to Tyre and Sidon, totally different country, the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians, great sailors, sailed around the Mediterranean, believed in Baal, had a massive structure. You can go to see this massive structure to Baal that was built there. You know, straight up Gentiles, straight up Baal worshipers. You know, nothing redeemable. They sacrificed their children to Baal, all right, that's a fact. Jesus is up here. He's in the worst place ever. Don't go, Jesus. I'm going, I'm going, I'm going up. I'm going to save, I'm saving these people, okay. And so ancient Israel looked at the north as a place of wickedness and destruction. The further you got away from Jerusalem, the worse it got, right. You had the holy land, the land of promise. That was protected, that was protected and looked over by God. The further away you got from that, you were in the land of other gods. Literally, that's the mindset. You were in Baal's land right now. Wicked, evil, okay. Where did Jezebel come from? Oh, from Phoenicia, right. The worst women, you know, in the Bible for wickedness and stuff like that and killing God's people, Jezebel takes the cake. Where did she come from? The north, right. Now, this is an interesting little thing, okay. This is an extra biblical thing that I'm using just to support this point. In some extra biblical writings like the Book of Enoch, okay. Fascinating book, by the way. Mount Hermon, which is up in the north. You can see like Caesarea Philippi, okay. And then right above that is Mount Hermon. That's up in the north. According to the Book of Enoch, the fallen angels came down. And this is where they intermarried with women, okay, and produced what's called the Nephilim, the giants. And they, I'm not saying I believe this. I'm telling you what the Jews believe. The Nephilim from Genesis 6, the giants in that land, okay. They all came from up north, all right. So nothing, I'm using this as an example. Nothing good came from the north. Jesus is going to start His ministry up in the north, right. It's almost like Jesus is beginning this spiritual battle by taking it to the enemy straight away, right. Straight away. He's not messing around. Driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. He's tempted of the devil and he comes out ready. He comes out ready to go, to cast out all of these infirmities, to cast out all of the wickedness, to make people whole physically and spiritually. He goes immediately, right. Shock and awe, we call it. Remember, shock and awe during, you know, the invasion of Iraq. So yeah, and that's a military tactic, isn't it? Blitzkrieg, you know, the Germans are going to use that as well. Blitzkrieg, they're going to find a weak spot and they're going to just put everything in that area in order to, you know, make what's called a breakthrough, right. They make a breakthrough and you can't stop it once it's through. This is exactly what Jesus is doing. He's making a breakthrough. It's a military tactic. He immediately starts His ministry in the land of the enemy, in the land of wickedness in the north. I think it's pretty cool, right. I like to think that way, right. I think that lesson is, that's a good lesson to understand. All right, now without looking at everything here in this account in Matthew 8, the Roman Centurion, it's mentioned twice in Scripture, once in Mark as well and also in Matthew the 8th chapter. Let's just take a look at Matthew the 8th chapter. And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, where's Capernaum? Is Capernaum, where's that? Yeah, Capernaum is up in the, right by actually Phoenicia there, okay. So again, we're in the same general area of the north. And who's up there? Oh, another, you know, another gentile. This is a Roman Centurion, right. The epitome, the foundation of Roman legions, okay. And he's up there. But this particular Roman legion, we don't know his name. He had taken on aspects of Jewish religion. He was respectful.

In fact, I believe Mark talks about that he had set aside money so a synagogue could be built, right, for the Jews that were living in there. He gave, he set aside some money and put that money towards the building of a synagogue. And the local Jewish population respected him for that. You know, a lot of times these Romans were not nice people. They came there to make money. And how did they make money? They extorted money. They extorted money. Oh, you know, like you ever had like in school, like someone, you know, we talk about someone taking your lunch money or something like that. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like what they did, you know, Roman soldier. He's got the power of Rome behind him. You know, he says, you know, Ben, you're just a regular Jewish guy. I'm a Roman Centurion or a soldier. Yeah, you can't go by here until you pay me some money. This is outrageous. Boom, you're in jail, buddy. Maybe I beat you up. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? I got two of my cronies with me. And this is what happened constantly, okay. And they were hated, obviously. They were hated. Roman soldiers were hated by Jews. But this is up north as well. So it was a little more, you know, it wasn't people got along a little bit better just because there were a lot of different people, right. So he was a friend of Israel. And so, you know, again, he uses this opportunity to call out Jewish religious elitism. And in Acts the 10th chapter, this same type of thinking is going to happen to the Apostle Peter, right. Remember, with Cornelius, and he sees the big sheep come down from heaven. Arise, Peter, and eat. Not so, Lord. I've never eaten anything unclean from the day of my birth, Peter says. So that thinking had to change as well. Hey, it isn't just about the Jews anymore, okay. It's about everybody. You've got to go out there and preach. And in fact, if we look at the history of the Apostles, okay, obviously the tradition, you know, we're not told directly in Scripture what happened. But, you know, just think about where all of these different Apostles went. Well, guess what? They went to the four corners of the world. In fact, Paul's last journey, the fourth journey that he was going to make was all the way out to Spain, to the furthest reaches of Spain and Portugal. Well, why was he doing that? He was preaching the Gospel to everybody, okay. That was his job. And he was going to the furthest nations to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, okay. So they believed it, brothers and sisters. They believed it. And that faith and that love of Christ that they had in them compelled them to go and to preach the Gospel to all mankind. And that's, you know, we look in Matthew as well and in Mark. You know, that was what? The Great Commission, right? Go ye out into the world and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, baptizing in my name. And, you know, thankfully they did that. We now have that opportunity. We have been, as Paul says, what? Grafted in. We have been grafted into those promises that were made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right? I think Paul says another time, you know, in times past, as Paul says, he was preaching at Mars Hill, in times past God winked at him, you know, winked at all the evil, right? But now what? He calls all men to repentance. Now is the time. He's not, you know, ignoring it anymore. Now is the time. He calls all sinners, all men, to repentance. Questions? Comments? Yes, spread the ball. What weapons did we face today?

The strong and evil going into areas. What weapons did we face today?

Going into difficult areas and to preach. It didn't seem to curtail him from thinking negatively.

Yeah, no, it was never a negative thing, Bob. It was always a positive and it was always to heal. We can accomplish against all odds. Yes. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. You know, we're going to be, and I'm sure all of us in this room has been in difficult situations where we've been in enemy territory, Bob. You know what I'm saying? Whatever it is, maybe we're in a tough spiritual situation where we shouldn't be. We made a mistake and we're in a location or a situation where we shouldn't be. You know, what do we do in those situations? You know, Jesus, he preached. He healed. You know, sometimes in those situations it's best, Bob, just to withdraw yourself. I've found, right? You know, I would say it depends on the situation on how we're going to preach that gospel. You know, like you said, we can be in very difficult situations sometimes. You know, there's no easy answer to it. But Jesus was starting his ministry with a statement. He was making a statement. You know, Rich, I was going to make the point that when you talk about him starting in the land of wickedness, that's really what Isaiah 9, 1, and 2 is talking about. You know, dwell in the shadow of death. Yeah, to shine. Yes, yes. It's really the same message. Yes. That's a good point, Jim. Thank you.

All right. So any other questions, comments? All right. So I don't know what next week's class is going to be on. I'll figure something out. But I wanted to finish that, you know, just part of that series of different groups of people that Jesus, you know, interacted with. And then lastly, I just see right here, you know, Legion Mark 5. And again, you know, this is not set in stone. But I've read some commentaries on Legion as well. Again, where did this event happen? Up north. Okay. And, you know, was this individual a Gentile as well? You know, I read a commentary that, you know, he was like he may have been a soldier as well that had PTSD and lost his mind during battle or something like that. I don't know. But anyways, this also happened up north. And this man was suffering tremendously, tremendously. In fact, you know, they were keeping pigs up there. And that should tell you that we're closer to Gentile regions, right? Jews don't eat pigs. But there's other people up in the north that eat pigs quite frequently. It's like the staple of their diet.

Class 2

Original URL Sunday, March 9, 2025

Transcript

Class 3

Original URL Sunday, March 16, 2025

Transcript

So we had finished up the event that we looked at last Sunday was Jesus clearing the court of the Gentiles. We talked about the significance of that. We talked about the spiritual aspects of it as well, the wall of partition. We talked about how the court of the Gentiles was supposed to be an area of prayer and of reverence for God and that really turned into a marketplace with just kind of a smelly, cluttered, very active place,

which was not conducive, obviously, to focusing your mind on the things of God. So that really was Jesus' big gripe with the whole setup of the temple. They had forgotten about the Gentiles. They were so fixated on their relationship that the court of the Gentiles that was set up for non-Jews

was just kind of rotting away and had been taking over by people who were not really interested in the spiritual things of the temple. They were interested in gaining more and more wealth and influence in and around the temple complex. So anyways, yes? Brother Steve? You know, it was interesting to me when I was looking at that slide last week. It says, Jesus clears the court of the Gentiles. Yes. And I read it wrong, like Jesus was throwing the Gentiles out of the court. Right, right. OK, OK. And that's not it. It's the, quote, court of the Gentiles, unquote. Yeah, for sure. And so it's just another example of Jesus, even though he was sent to the raw sheep of the tribes of Israel, he still took the time to extend that gospel message to everybody, including the Gentiles, as we're going to see as we go on. OK. And then that wall of partition, we saw a quick video on that, how that there was an actual wall. And on that wall were signs that said, any non-Jew that passes here will be subject to death. So it actually took place. And Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, is going to reference that wall of partition when he's talking about Jews and Gentiles coming together under the name of Christ. So we're going to take a look at Jesus today with probably the most powerful Gentile that he came in contact with. And that was Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, the symbol of Roman authority and power. So I love that confrontation, right? You have Jesus. My kingdom is not of this world. Pontius Pilate, whose kingdom his whole life, his whole reality was of that world. You know, he got into this position by being a worldly guy. So Roman rulers, particularly outside of Italy, they could be really brutal guys. Rome was not known for their empathy and kindness in most cases. In order to kind of keep things running within the empire, there needed to be good prosperous trade. But there also needed to be law and order. And the Romans just didn't really care who they beat up or who they killed or crucified, particularly in a place like Judea, which is constantly having these uprisings and these riots, the crazy Jews and their religious beliefs. That's the way the Romans looked at them. And so Pilate is going to be sent to this area. And we're going to find out that he was there for a long period of time. He is going to be the longest serving governor of the province of Judea. So that should tell us something right there. He obviously had some type of political skill, some type of intelligence in order to stay in a position for 10 years, which was pretty contentious. It's like kind of being like the governor of Afghanistan when the United States was in there, or the governor of Iraq or something like that. It's kind of a thankless job. But in order to keep everyone in line, you had to be brutal. And Pilate was a brutal guy. Corruption as well. Corruption was a big thing. Stealing money, using money for your own little pet projects, as we're going to see as well. Taking money and giving it to your lackeys, to your cronies, in order to kind of keep your power base going. All very common in the Roman world, all very common in our world as well. Still happening. And so Pilate, he was known particularly by the Jews as being super brutal, really corrupt. And he superseded all of the other Roman governors as far as corruption is concerned. Now, obviously, we have to look at the source, right? The Jews hated anybody that was ruling over them. That was really the big question during that time. Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria supposedly reprimanded him severely for his briberies, insults, robberies, outrages, and wanton injuries, execution without trial, constantly repeated, ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty. So this is kind of the labels that the Jews at that time put upon Pontius Pilate. Not great, right? They didn't have a whole lot of nice things to say about Pontius Pilate. But quite frankly, brothers and sisters, I don't know if the Jews at this time would have anything nice to say about any Roman that was in there. They wanted all the Romans out, particularly the power of Pilate. They wanted him gone. They wanted to be independent again. So every time they saw Pilate in all of the great pomp and circumstance, they were just filled with hatred. He is a representation of everything that we hate. And Pilate didn't spend a lot of time in Jerusalem. He spent most of his time on the seacoast of the Mediterranean, Caesarea. Smart move. He didn't want to be associated. Not associated, it's probably the wrong word. But he didn't want to be in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was like a hotbed of religious activity. This is where all the crazies were. He wanted to be in the Roman town. It really was a Roman town that was built by Herod right on the Mediterranean, a much better climate. He was around other Romans and Greeks, a lot of Roman and Greeks that lived in Caesarea. Jews as well, but not as much, certainly not as Jerusalem. So he spent a lot of his time in Caesarea. Really wanted nothing to do with Jerusalem. Had to go there particularly on Passover. That's when they had to be there, particularly the Roman legions, because you had close to half a million people in Jerusalem at that time. So anyways. And then Luke in the 13th chapter makes mention of this, and we'll take a look at it, that he killed some Galileans during Passover and mingled their blood with their sacrifices. So that gives us a little insight into the brutality of Pilate. Pilate didn't play around when it came to rebellions and revolts. He put them down very aggressively and very brutally. And so we get kind of an insight into the man who we are going to deal with. Yes, Brother Steve? Are there sacrifices? These are the Jewish sacrifices, you think? So I saw, I read some of those things, because I had the same exact question, Steve. What does this mean? And some of the commentaries that I kind of were drawn to was the mixing of their blood was kind of in reference to the Passover at that time. And so their deaths were mixing with the Passover lamb's deaths as well, like the mixing of the blood, the human blood and the sacrifice of the lamb on the Passover. So it was done at Passover. And so Luke is trying to get to show us that Pilate would shed blood at any time, and he mixed it with the Passover sacrifices. I don't think he took blood and dripped it into the sacrifice. I think that would cause craziness, right? I think it was more of like a spiritual thing. All right, any other questions before we go on? All right, very good. Famous painting right here, I forget the name of it, but here's Pilate, you know, Behold the Man. We'll take a look at that as we go on. All right, little is known about the early life of Pilate. Okay, we don't have a whole lot of writings like where Pilate grew up, this, that, and the other thing. His family came from Italy, okay, so he was an Italian, certainly makes him a Gentile, most likely in the army. He worked his way up, his why up, okay, also his why up, his way up, and so this was very common. You would work your way up through the military or, you know, if you were a wealthy family, you would be given some kind of job in the government. If they found you were capable, you could kind of continue to go up there. And I think this is what happened with Pilate, right? He had a pretty decent head on his shoulders. You know, he was a good soldier, and he was in kind of the political circle of Tiberius, right, who was the emperor at that time. And so he knew all of these players. So you had to be connected in the Roman world in order to get one of these governorships, and they could be very lucrative, depending on where you were, you know, placed. Like Syria was a very wealthy place. Asia Minor was a very wealthy place. And so this was, you know, this was the way in which you got wealth if you were a governor. They used to divide their moneys up into threes, okay, a third, a third, a third. A third of the taxes would go back to kind of the infrastructure, that type of thing. A third of the taxes, another third of the taxes would go to the emperor. Okay, this is kind of the money that I have to give to the emperor. And then the third, you would keep for yourself, right? You would jack up the prices, jack up the taxes, right? If the taxes were $5 from the emperor, you would say, no, no, no, they're $7. You would keep those $2. You see what I'm saying? There were all kinds of little scams to keep all of the tax money. And this is how governors would enrich themselves, through corruption. And this is obviously one of the things that drove the Jews crazy, because in some circumstances, Pilate was trying to take the temple money in order to build special projects for himself to ingrandize himself. And one of them was an aqueduct that we'll take a look at. We've talked about this, longer serving governor of Judea, which was about for 10 years, okay? So that tells you something. You can't really be in a position for 10 years, I don't care what position it is, unless you got something going on upstairs. You knew how the game was played. And I think that's where Pilate stood. He appointed the high priest Caiaphas. Now here's the little thing, brothers and sisters. Pilate, or the governor of Judea, had the power to appoint or to remove the high priest. It's a very powerful position. And in fact, some of the other governors had done this. They were tired of this high priest, they would get rid of him, put in another guy. Pilate was the only governor that did not change high priest. Caiaphas was his guy when he started, Caiaphas was his guy when he left as well. And so Pilate on some level was allied with the high priest, with Caiaphas. He was allied with the Sanhedrin. They knew each other, they worked together. Probably butted heads a lot as well.

But for 10 years, having a political relationship with somebody for 10 years, that's pretty impressive, particularly in this area in Jerusalem where Romans are hated by the Jews deeply.

So there were a couple times where he kind of clashed with the Jews that caused riots and deaths and stuff like that. The first thing was he tried to bring in a standard of Caesar, a picture of Tiberius Caesar. And I think like some golden shields that represented the power of Caesar. He tried to bring these imperial standards into Jerusalem, which is a way of showing what? Power and authority. I'm bringing my standards into Jerusalem. I'm bringing Rome's standards. Caesar Augustus, his picture. I'm bringing right in. The golden shields of Tiberius I'm bringing in as well. And so the Jews in Jerusalem went crazy. Like, no, you're not. And so there was a big fight. And in fact, the Jews in Caesarea surrounded his house and was gonna just destroy his house, like light it on fire, riot or whatever. And so Pilate says, okay, I'm gonna listen to you guys. I'll definitely listen to you. So they all came together in like an empty theater or something like that. And Pilate had all of his soldiers take their swords out ready to kill all of these Jews as like a threat. And the Jews are like, so what? Kill us, we don't care. And so Pilate thought for a second like, okay, what kind of maniacs am I dealing with here? And so he actually, which is smart on his part, he actually defused the situation when he saw that the killing of these Jews was not going to stop this revolt. And so what did he do? He withdrew the standard out of Jerusalem. Smart political move, right? But it just goes to show that there was this power struggle between Rome and the Jewish people, particularly in Jerusalem, but who was controlling the destiny of the Jewish people? Romans were saying, we control your destiny. Jews are like, nah, we control our own destiny through God. So that's where it was. Brother Steve. Romans put the eagle in the temple. Am I remembering that right? Yeah, so there was a standard that was at the revolt. That was AD 70. Yeah, right before like AD 66, 67. Yes, there was an incident which the Romans wanted to, I think it was at the same time when they went into the temple, Steve, and took like $17 million out of it, and then put up the standard. The Roman standard right there. And again, it just shows we're dominant. We dominate this place, not you. So it's all symbolic. Remember in the ancient world, we look at these things like that's silly. Why, you know, a standard, but it was very important. Those things had power. You know, if you have a picture or a standard of the Roman legions and of Tiberius Caesar, you're letting the world know this guy runs the show here in Jerusalem. Another incident where a pilot wanted to kind of build an aqueduct with his name on it. Pilot's aqueduct, that's pretty cool. And he was gonna, he took some money from, he was gonna use some of the temple money to build this aqueduct. And the Jews again went crazy. You're not touching the temple money. This is our money. There was a big riot. He ordered his Roman soldiers to beat the people with clubs. They have these very heavy clubs. Oftentimes they would put like lead or something inside them. They actually have one of them. Brother West actually used it to, you know, kill fish or something like that, like whack fish. But it's pretty heavy. You get hit with one of these things, you know it. So people actually died during this by just getting beaten up with these bully clubs. So look, this was, this could be a crazy time, right? And so there's violence a lot. It's like the temperature is always right near boil. And Pilate's gotta like manage all this stuff. And he did it for 10 years till he ran into Jesus, right? It kind of blew up his whole existence. So I found this stuff interesting, like some background stuff, like, you know, what was the relationship with the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas? And that's the other reason, brothers and sisters, remember, we're gonna look at this. Remember, Jesus was taken to Annas, right? The father-in-law of Caiaphas. And that just goes, I think he was, before Pilate came, he was the high priest. And Pilate removed him and put Caiaphas in his place. But there were certain Jews that still saw Annas as the high priest. Rome has no power over, he can't remove, who's this guy? And so that's why they kept him in that kind of co-high priest, I guess, right? He still had power within the Jewish community, a lot of power. He was the chosen high priest of God. Pilate has no control over who puts him in the high priest. Had nothing to do with Pilate. And Pilate's like, yeah, it has everything to do with me, actually. So, you know, that's just the mentality. All right. Here are a couple artifacts on the left-hand side. You have some coins that were minted by Pilate to kind of commemorate his governorship. They found these with his name on it. That was very common during this time. You know, money was another way to get your propaganda out there. Anytime there was like a big battle or something like that and the Caesar won, he would commemorate coins that depicted his great victory. So money was just another way to kind of, you know, get your message across there. And then just one, go ahead. And that was why they had to exchange their money when they went into the temple, right? That's right, they would have all of this money. And they, in order to buy and sell within the court of the Gentiles, you had to get either a temple coin or a Syrian denarii, I think it was. Those were the only two coins that could be used. You know, so that was the other. If you can see on the left-hand side, you can see kind of, it's not perfectly oval. It looks like some of it has been kind of clipped off. And that was another interesting practice that they would do was they would get these coins and they would, they had a little like snip and they would snip off any like little extra, like gold or whatever this was. And they would do this very, and eventually, you would have enough gold to make your own money. So they're taking away a portion of the gold on here. And you can see that that's happened on this, on the side that they've snipped off a little gold. So it's not as heavy, it's not worth as much. But you've taken some of that gold for yourself and you do this enough times, you're making your own money. It's like a counterfeit scheme. Very common in the ancient world. Nothing new under the sun, brothers and sisters, right? And then on the right-hand side, I don't know if you can really see that, but that is an inscription of Pilate that he built something. Some of it is broken off, but this is kind of a stone that is commemorating the building of a particular structure that Pilate was involved in. Now, interesting thing about this, the aqueduct, right? He ended up building the aqueduct, but he didn't use temple money. But the Jews, particularly more radical Jews, like the Sakari and the Zealots, they hated this aqueduct because, again, it was a symbol of Rome's power and that he had tried to use temple money. In fact, he may have used some temple money as well.

And after, during the revolt of AD 70, before then, they destroyed this aqueduct, all right? So this is very interesting because it just shows kind of the radical nature of the Jews at this time during the great rebellion in AD 70. They cut off their nose to spite their face. You had an aqueduct bringing water into the city. They're like, no, it's Pilate's, destroy it. Okay, let's destroy it. They had like 10 years of foodstuffs in Jerusalem as well, but the radicals, the Zealots and the Sakari, they destroyed it all. They burnt all the provisions in order to kind of make this conflict. They had no choice but to fight. So it just shows the mentality. You know, this was a very deep, deep hatred of the Romans. And I'm not saying the Jews didn't have cause. They absolutely had cause. The Romans were brutal to the Jewish people. They were. So anyways, all right, let's take a look at this.

So we know from scripture, now obviously these events are in scripture in all four gospels.

Some gospels have a little more information. Some gospels leave some things out. John tells us, gives us the most information as it relates to Jesus's interaction with Pilate.

He's sentenced to death by Caiaphas. He's taken to Caiaphas' house. And he's actually, he talks to Caiaphas. They ask him questions. He's mocked and he's beaten. Okay, so even before he sees Pilate, he has already been physically beaten by the Jews here. Okay, so Pilate doesn't see him kind of in his natural state, so to speak. He was beaten, he was spit upon, he was punched. So, you know, I'm sure his face had marks from that. I'm sure his body showed signs of that as well. And he is going to be sentenced to death. The high priest is going to rend his clothes because he's saying, you shall see the Son of Man coming in power in the clouds, right? And he rends his clothes. It was blasphemy, saying that he was the Son of God. So let's take a look at John, the 18th chapter. So 18, beginning in verse 28. Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas onto the hall of judgment. That was where Pilate stood. He came into kind of his seat of judgment and everyone would come to hear his judgments, bring their problems to him, that type of thing. And it was early and they themselves didn't go into the judgment hall unless they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. Pilate then went out unto them and said, what accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, if he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to thee. So that's an interesting reply, right? What has he done? And the Jews are like, we wouldn't have brought him to you if he hadn't done something bad.

In other words, they don't say to Pilate, why is he being condemned to death? Because Pilate, son of God, OK, big deal. There's a lot of sons of God around here. And so they were being kind of coy, I guess. Then Pilate said unto them, take ye him and judge him according to your law. OK, what am I doing here? What do you want from me? The Jews therefore said unto him, it is not lawful for us to put any man to death. So this was a serious crime, but it was a crime of blasphemy that they were concerned about. Because he called himself the son of God. There is no law under Roman law about blasphemy to a Jewish god. He didn't die for that under Roman law. Romans are like, whatever, everyone's got gods. So that would not have brought about a death penalty. So they had to find another tact. Wasn't going to be blasphemy against Yahweh. Pilate could care less. All right. Verse 32, that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which he spake, signifying what death he should die. Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again and called Jesus and said unto him, art thou the king of the Jews? All right, so now it's kind of coalescing. And this is something that Pilate would be concerned about. You have a Jewish guy proclaiming himself that he's king of the Jews? Well, that's traitorous. Right? We've got a major rebellion on our hands. Had this happened constantly throughout the Roman Empire? Of course it did. People were always rebelling against Rome. Hey, I'm the new king of this area. I'm the new king of this area. And Rome's like, no man, you're not. No, you're not. And so that would be something that Pilate would be concerned about. And then Jesus has a great answer. Do you say this thing of yourself? Or did others tell it of me? And Pilate's like, what? Am I a Jew? Someone told it to me. Of course someone told it to me. I don't care about any of this stuff. And so Pilate says, I know a nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto thee. What hast thou done? And Jesus has these very famous words. My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from thence? And Pilate asks him more aggressively, are you a king then? Give me the answer. He says, thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world. So there's a lot of tension going on in this back and forth. And it's a great back and forth between the ruler of the standard of Rome's power in the form of Pilate and Christ, the son of God, the future king of the world. And so interesting thing too, Pilate's wife is going to be involved in this. We don't know her name. In other words, scripture doesn't tell us her name. But her name, according to tradition, was Claudia Procula.

And in some Eastern churches, brothers and sisters, she's actually a saint, like some of the Orthodox churches, Eastern Catholic Church. The Coptic Church has her as a saint and has Pilate as a saint as well. So Pilate, it's interesting because in some churches, in some denominations, like the Coptic denomination in Egypt, they've been around for almost a couple thousand years, they recognize Pilate as a saint. He supposedly converted to Christianity. And they say that Pilate was like he was trying to stop the Jews from doing this kind of stuff. And the same thing with his wife as well. There are other stories about Pilate as well that he was recalled back to Rome, which is true. And he committed suicide. So a lot of these stories come from tradition that have been around for a long time. But a lot of them came out of the Middle Ages as well. You don't see a lot of stories about Pilate and his background until the 700s or so. So there's a period of time where we don't really have a whole lot of written historical documents

about Pilate afterward. And so Jesus is flogged as well. We forget about this, but that's another interaction that he had with Gentiles. They weren't all good, brothers and sisters. They were bad. He's going to get flogged nearly to death by Roman soldiers. We're not told where they're from, but they were absolutely Gentiles. And then he's going to get a crown of thorns kind of placed right down upon his head. He's going to suffer tremendously at the hands of the Romans. And in fact, in the Apostles' Creed, there's a line in there, he suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, died, and was buried. And so even in the Apostles' Creed, one of the oldest creeds in Christianity, Pontius Pilate plays a very important part in it. He's named as a creed that the early day Christians would say over and over again as a template of their faith. And so after he's beaten, he's bloody, like you could probably barely recognize Jesus.

He's getting flogged with whips and everything else. He's had tremendous loss of blood. He had been beaten the night before, brothers and sisters, right, by the Jews. So both the Jews and the Romans beat Christ, both of them. And afterward, he brings Jesus back out in Pilate, you know.

Behold the man. Look at him now. Look at him. Is this what you wanted? I've done what you wanted up to death. And they weren't satisfied. They weren't satisfied. They wanted him crucified. And so we'll get to this last slide right here. Roman soldiers are going to whip Jesus as he carries the cross. In fact, his body is going to break down. He's not going to be able to carry the cross too heavy. His body is too beaten up. And Simon of Cyrene is going to be compelled, it says. OK, the Romans are going to grab this Jewish guy who was probably there for the Passover and physically, by force and violence, force him to carry the cross and also, you know, pushing Jesus up into Calvary, up into the goth of the place of the skull. And so there's a tremendous amount of brutality that is going on here, brothers and sisters. Just the act of crucifixion, putting spikes into your hands and into your feet, hanging there, right, all at the hands of Gentiles. They divide his clothing as well, right? There's Roman soldiers that divide his clothing, most likely gamble for it, gamble for his clothes. Who's going to get his, you know, his long robe? There is a interesting traditional story as well about the centurion that stabs him in the side. Blood and water come out, right? He was already dead at the time. Longinus was the centurion. This is his name. We're not told his name in scripture, but again, traditions. He was a half-blind soldier who, when he hit Jesus with the lance, the water and the blood got into his eyes and it made him, he could see again. OK, so that's the story. He was made a saint as well. And so this Roman soldier who's expressed, he said, truly, this man was the Son of God. So he expressed that faith. And in church tradition, he became a saint. He became a Christian. And in fact, he was a martyr as well. He went to different places preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. And he ended up being killed for it. So take that for what it's worth. Interesting stories. And the holy lance stabbed. I don't know if they still have that somewhere. Listen, when it comes to artifacts and stuff like that, that is a fascinating thing. There's like four or five different skulls of John the Baptist in and around Europe. So these relics were very important in the Middle Ages. People would go on pilgrimages to go to different relics and to different areas. People still do it today, like La Salette down in Attleboro. That's a shrine. People go there all the time and go buy it every day when I go to work. Also in Fatima and places in France, that type of thing. People still go on pilgrimages to these different places.

Jesus and Prayer

Original URL Sunday, March 30, 2025

Transcript

All right. So today's class is going to be on Jesus in prayer. I'm going to take a look at events in Jesus' life, where he used prayer, the importance of prayer, obviously, in his relationship with his father, encouraging different places that he prayed, different prayers that he prayed. And then probably right around, and Sharon's not here to enjoy this, that's unfortunate, probably right around 10 o'clock. I have like a 10 minute little video, which is pretty good, where an archaeologist goes and kind of looks at different types of foods that Israel ate up in there. Looks at different cattle and stuff like that, because the cattle that we have today is not the cattle that they had in the ancient world. It was smaller cattle. And they're almost going extinct, by the way, and they'll get into that. You know, like they're going to make a recipe, too, and they're going to eat the recipe from the ancient world. It's pretty cool. It's 10 minutes. So yeah. All right, so let's get into it. Obviously, Jesus was a Jewish person. He grew up under the law. He knew the law inside out. He most likely memorized all of the law, also probably memorized all of the 150 psalms as well. He committed them to memory. We know that under extreme pressure and stress, I'll give you an example when he was in the wilderness, being tempted of the devil, what did he turn to? He turned to the words of his father for strength and for encouragement, for stability. He turned back to that foundation. There's obviously a lesson in that for us as well. But you know, he knew all of the traditions. He knew all of the rituals. We know that when he was 12 years old, he had an incredible interest in the things of the temple and the things of God. And he was three days without his parents, that story. Joseph and Mary are beside themselves, and Jesus is in the temple. You wonder where Jesus slept during this time. Was he sleeping someplace near the temple? Was he inside of a chamber or something like that with other people? Because the back and forth with the doctors of the law didn't happen outside. It happened inside someplace in the temple complex. So these are just questions I think about. What did he eat during this time? He's just so focused even at 12 years old on the things of God. Oh, it's day two. I'm gonna go back and talk to the doctors of the law again. So it just wasn't a few hours. He spent three days there, and to the point where it's almost like he forgot about Joseph and Mary and the fact that he should have been with them. But anyways, it just shows you his mindset. And so he would have known all of the major prayers, particularly from Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And we know that Jesus took that to heart because they asked him, what is the greatest commandment of all? And he immediately said what? Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And so that's called the Shema. That is like the most important prayer, I guess, in Judaism, is the statement of oneness. The oneness of God. There are no other gods besides me. And he would have prayed this, and he would have prayed other prayers as well. And so that's the Son of God praying at the temple. The Son of God teaching at the temple as well. Debating and talking to the doctors of the law at that time. I think it's a very, very powerful image. So there are other Jewish prayers that Jesus would have known as well. For instance, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. Okay, so that's interesting, because when Jesus tells us how to pray, right, with the Lord's Prayer, does he mention daily bread? Yeah, he does. And so this is directly from one of the major prayers of Judaism, who brings forth bread from the earth. Give us this day our daily bread, okay? Right from Judaism. Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us to hear the sound of the shofar. Okay, that's a calling together of the people. When you heard that, this was done with the feast, particularly with Passover. You would hear the shofar. It would gather the people together to Jerusalem, in this case, for the celebration of the feast of the Passover, when the angel of death passed over the homes of the Hebrews, who had put the blood on the top and on the sides of their doorposts. Number three, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time. These are just snippets of those, right, of these prayers. But anyways, again, it is a recognition of God being the God of the universe, who saved the ancestors from destruction. And again, this shows a connection. These types of prayers, they're obviously prayers to God. But on a human level, the person saying the prayer, he's connecting himself to the past. He's connecting himself to his ancestors. So there is a continuation of thousands and thousands of years from that time when God was helping the ancestors, now or in the present day, and he's still helping us, a continuation of God's love and strength in the Jewish mind. And so this is kind of what these prayers signify. And Jesus would have gotten all this. He would have seen the connections with the law of Moses and with his ministry, because it all comes out of that. These themes that we find in the Old Testament can be found in what Jesus talks about, the important things that Jesus talks about. And then the 150 Psalms as prayers. They were prayed, the Psalms were songs, but they were also prayers. Think about the different Psalms in scripture. Wide variety of different types of prayers. Prayers extolling the righteousness and greatness of God.

Psalms dealing with sadness and despair. Songs of hope, we just read one. Song of hope, when they came back into the land after their captivity in Babylon. Well, this was a song of thanksgiving to God for bringing them back into the land. There's other Psalms in here that question God. Where are you, God? Do you not hear me, God? Give you an example, Psalm 44. That is a psalm of, again, remembering what God had done for their ancestors, and then asking God, don't you see the trouble that we are in now, your people? Will you not help us like you helped us in the past? Paul's gonna take Psalm 44 in Romans when he's talking about all day long we are a sheep brought to the slaughter, that type of thing. Yeah, I'll look it up real quick, so. In the 44th Psalm. Yeah, verse 22. Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake, why do you sleep, Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. And so that's a plea, that's a plea. It is a prayer, pleading to God for salvation, for protection, to save them. And Paul's gonna use this in Romans the eighth chapter when he's making the connection about the persecution that the early day Christians were going through as well. And so again, you can see the connection to the Psalms. You can see the connection to the law. Paul, obviously, just like Jesus was brought up, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he says. He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, the great teacher of Judaism. And so he knew this and he saw those connections as well. And then of course the prayers on the feast days. We talked about all the different feasts that the Jews would participate in. They had prayers associated with them. There were rituals, there were traditions that were associated with them as well. The Feasts of Bulls, right? You go out, you build yourself a little structure and you would live in there for, I think it was a week. So again, all this stuff Jesus would be intimately familiar with. He loved it. It brought him closer to his father. He was single-mindedly focused on the things of God. There's a lesson there as well. What's our focus? What do we focus on in our lives? Are we distracted? Are we confused? Jesus was never confused. He was never distracted. He was focused on the things of his father. Okay. There are 31 references to Jesus praying. It's a lot. We're not told every single time that Jesus prayed but 31 references to Jesus praying. I would say that that would be an important thing that we have to focus on. Jesus praying. He prayed in various locations. Mountainside, he prayed indoors, in the desert, in water, et cetera. He prayed in all these different places. Before significant events, the start of his ministry, his arrest, his crucifixion. So during times of great stress, what did Jesus do? He turned to his father in prayer. He's the start of this great ministry. I always think about what Jesus' mindset was. He's starting his ministry. He comes out of the waters of baptism, Spirit of God, Holy Spirit descends upon him and immediately he's driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Immediately he starts. What's Christ's mindset? Well, it was one of love and commitment to his father. But he knew, Christ knew that it was the beginning of his ministry which ultimately would bring him to his suffering. It would ultimately bring him to the garden. It would ultimately bring him to the cross as well. So you wonder what was going through his mind. But even on the cross, he prayed, didn't he? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Right, it was a plea to God. And so, you know, these human feelings that come up, Jesus understood them all. He experienced all of those things. All of the things that we experience, Jesus experienced. And that's why he's our mediator. That's why we look to him for guidance. All right, so let's take a look at these. In Mark, the 13th chapter. All right, the 13th chapter, verse five.

Is that right? Verse five. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Forget that one, that is wrong. Luke five. What I was thinking there. All right, Luke five, verse 16. So this is after, you know, he's, in verse 11, and when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all and followed him. So the disciples are following him now. Verse 12, he heals a man full of leprosy.

And people are, verse 15, but so much the more went there a fame abroad of him, and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be heard by him, to be healed by him of their infirmity. So people are coming. He's obviously, you know, he's preaching this gospel that it was, you know, people marveled that his words were told. But also, he has this ability to heal infirmities. Just think about that in the ancient world. You had someone that could take away, you know, the negative health that you're dealing with. You know, whatever infirmity it was, the touch of Jesus, touch of Jesus, and they're desperate, and so they come to Christ. But this is physically and spiritually and mentally exhausting, I would imagine, for Jesus. Just think about, even, you know, people that like to be around people. Okay, they're outgoing, that type of thing. You need a break, right? You need some time away for yourself. We call it, you know, like recharging the batteries or whatever it is today, but refocusing yourself. Jesus, you know, Jesus had to take some time for himself as well. Verse 16, and he withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed. So it was solitary. You know, he wasn't, he didn't, Jesus wasn't the type of guy just to be by himself. You know, there's an interesting difference between John the Baptist, right, who was in the wilderness. He was more of a solitary figure. He would come out of the wilderness to preach and to also baptize. Jesus was in the midst of the people constantly. You know, he was the ultimate people person. But even, you know, even Jesus needed to find some time to be with God, quietly in solitude. And so that's, it's an interesting question. Do we have time built in our lives

for prayer and solitude to God? Do we? Do we have time built in for prayer? Quiet prayer, undistracted prayer. It can be a hard thing to do for sure, finding that time. But there really is no excuse, brothers and sisters, not to pray. There isn't. We have time. And we can find time in our lives, our busy lives to pray. But we have to be committed to it, just like Jesus was committed to it as well. Something that I've got like a 50 minute commute to work, right, you know, back and forth. So that's about almost a couple hours. I'm in solitude in my car. So it's a good time for prayers. It's a good time to listen to Psalms. It's a good time to read, you know, listen to readings, that type of thing. And so that, but you know, the other thing is too, you know, I'm driving as well. So I'm in solitude, but you know, there's people all around and there's nonsense and there's people driving too slow in my mind, you know. And so I have to,

I have to practice being in the right frame of mind for prayers, right? If we're not in the right frame of mind for our prayers, what effect are they gonna have on us? You know, if you just do it to get it out of the way. You know, I think we all have a prayer routine or whatever and it can take the shape of a lot of different things. But I do like, driving in my car is a good time because I do like, I like the solitude, but I try to stay undistracted. Oh, okay, no problem. No problem, everything's fine. Three, two, one, one, two, three, you know? So, interesting. Verse, chapter six, next chapter in Luke.

12, and it came to pass in those days.

Yeah, so actually, we'll just kind of set the stage because the scribes and Pharisees in verse seven watched him, whether he would heal on the Sabbath day that they might find an accusation against him. And this is when Jesus said, you know, I will ask you one thing, is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? And so after he restored the man's hand

to working properly, verse 11, and they were filled with madness and communed with one another that they, what they might do to Jesus. And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. Now that's interesting because he just had, you know, one of the more, you know, he had a pretty hostile, a pretty aggressive interaction with the scribes and Pharisees here. There was a lot of contention. They're looking to see whether or not he's gonna heal on the Sabbath day. You know, they're out to get him. They're looking to destroy Jesus. Think about that. Right, you ever been in a position, maybe at work or whatever it is, and you know someone's, you know, trying to undermine you or something, whatever office politics, school politics, right? That can be draining as well on you, mentally. And so Jesus now just had like this confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees. They were leaders of the nation. You know, people, most human beings do not like conflict. Okay, some people deal with conflict. That's just part of life. But there's very few people that go around looking for conflict. Oh, is that right, Rich? Yeah, we know people that are like that, right? They do like conflict, right? They're gonna stir it up, cause as much chaos as possible. Jesus obviously wasn't like that. But the scribes and Pharisees were out to get Jesus. And this is stressful. You know, the religious leaders want you dead. How does that weigh on you? And so because of that, what does Jesus do? Does he rant and rave against the scribes and Pharisees? No, he's gonna wait to do that later, right? We'll want to use scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. But at this time, he needed to strengthen himself spiritually. And what did he do? He went into the wilderness. He withdrew himself, that withdrawing.

All night in prayer. All night in prayer. You wonder what he was praying. You know, all night in prayer. Powerful. Very powerful. And so that's why, you know, when we say, we can say to ourselves, you know, I just don't, I don't know, I don't have the time to pray. You absolutely have the time to pray. Absolutely. I'll be very direct. There's no excuse for not praying. No excuse. We all have time to take five minutes of our day, 10 minutes, whatever our routine is, to pray to God. We should start our day with prayers. First thing we should do is pray to God. You know, if we get into that habit, it's a very positive thing. You know, we talk about, in school, you know, we're talking about the kids all the time. We're talking about, I always talk about it. Like, kids that are habitually late to school. I'm like, what, you know, what's your routine in the morning? Oh, I don't know. Oh, I just, you know, I get up early, I'm ready to go. You know, their routine is craziness, number one. Number two, they're up late all the time on the phone or the video games. I'm not saying everybody, people that are habitually late, kids that are habitually late. So their ritual and routine in the morning is messed up. When do you get up?

You know, they can't even do the math in their heads, right? They go, look, you just gotta get up five minutes earlier. Five minutes earlier and your problems go away. You know, they never do it. They never do it. So, you know, the importance of ritual and routine to human beings is very important. So we should be committed to having a ritual and routine of prayer in our lives. Our lives, you know? I'm gonna tell you this, brothers and sisters. There's no excuse for not praying in the morning, right? There's no excuse for not really praying throughout the day either. We don't have an excuse for it. We can pray in our heads all the time, small little prayers, thinking about God, committing to memory certain verses that strengthen us. That's a prayer, praying to God. Like one little thing, you know, I'll just share this. You know, when I'm doing like a wrestling, I'm doing like a, you know, I'm refereeing, I'm officiating and I know it's gonna be a big match and, you know, spotlight is literally on you. You know, with these big matches, they, I don't know if you've ever seen they drop the spotlight down on the mat and they shut off most of the light so everything is, you're literally in the spotlight. And I like to, before it starts, I say a little prayer to myself, you know?

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto you, oh God, my strength and my savior. So, and boom, you know? Just stuff like that. It's just little things that you've committed to memory, little, you know, little psalms, you know, prayers that people have been saying to God for thousands of years, thousands of years. And I think that is so wonderful that we are saying prayers that faithful men and women have been saying for over thousands of years, 3,000 years anyway, maybe even more. So keep that in mind. In the ninth chapter of Luke, who's texting, oh, thank you, brother Jim, Mark 1.35. Let's go to it. Brian Lloyd also told me Mark 1.35, that's it. I said 13.5, it's 1.35. How about that? All right. Yeah. Verse 32, in that even, this is in Mark 1, verse 32, in that even when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased and them that were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases and cast out many devils and suffered not the devils to speak because they knew him. Think about that. You know, think about the physical exertion and the mental exertion. All these people come at night time. When the sun set, it's night time. They're bringing everybody to Jesus to be healed. Right? People with all kinds of different troubles. And Jesus is healing them.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. This is another example, brothers and sisters, of Jesus emptying himself for the sake of his brothers. He emptied himself with the healing of the people, with the preaching of the gospel message of hope to the people. And so this is why he needed to go out. After all of these events, brothers and sisters, if you just look at the verses that we've looked at, after interacting with the people on a very intimate level, he has to go to a solitary place and what does he do? He prays. He prays, it's a big responsibility. Just think about the pressure that Christ had. You know? The pressure that he had on himself. The savior of the world. Yeah, and this, you know, we're not gonna, we won't look these up, but before the transfiguration with Peter, James, and John. Actually, I'm gonna look this one up because this is a good one. In 9 verse 28, I got it right here. Yeah, and it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment was white and glistening. So that was the purpose of it. And we're going to see that Jesus is going to, you know, show the disciples his glory. Elijah's gonna be there and Moses as well, signifying, obviously, the law and the prophets and the fulfillment of the law and the prophets in Christ. And then last one we'll look at in the next chapter in Luke, in verse 21. This is after he had sent out the 70, the 72 in this case, out to preach the gospel in verse 21. And in that hour, Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Father is, the Son is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. So this was after, this is his prayer of thanksgiving to his Father, for what? For bringing the gospel message of hope to mankind. First to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but then afterward to all mankind, to the Gentiles, from the world, to the whole world, from one end to the other. All right, so Jesus needed to pray. If Jesus needed to spend all night praying, we probably need to pray ourselves. We've talked about that. That's pretty straightforward. And it was important to his relationship with his Father. Jesus, we know Jesus prayed every day. He had an incredible connection with his Father. And so, you know, that's the excitation. What is our prayer life like? Is it strong? Is it consistent? Or is it not so consistent? It's here, okay, I pray this day, I don't pray this day, that type of thing. You know, ritual and routine, consistency of purpose, consistency of prayer, consistency of behavior. That's the thing. And that's the thing I think we struggle with. I certainly struggle with it as well, being consistent in my behavior. Right, there's times, hey, you know, I'm on the straight and narrow. I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, right?

And then there's other times where I'm not doing so good. I'm not doing so hot. So again, the importance of ritual, the importance of the routine, and the importance of praying every single day. So we have to ask ourselves our question. What's our prayer life like? Is it like Jesus? Or do we need a little work to do? We have to do a better job. That's up for you to, you know, you to decide. I can't decide what your prayer life like is. I can counsel you. You know, I can say, yeah, it sounds pretty good, or, you know, you might wanna do a little bit more. But that's just me. Let a man examine his own self. So prayer is so important, and Jesus tells us that it is, and he just doesn't tell us. He did it. He did it in his life.