Jesus and the Gentiles

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.