Harmony #18: The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12; Luke 6:17-26)

Then Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place. When he saw the crowds, Jesus went [back] up the mountain. After he sat down his disciples came to him. Then looking up at his disciples, he began to teach them by saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Blessed are those who mourn or weep, for they will be comforted and laugh.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst now for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. Rejoice in that day and jump for joy because your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.

There are two Greek words that Matthew could have used for blessed; Matthew chose the word makarios. This word was used by the Greeks for the kind of happiness and well-being the gods themselves enjoy. When Jesus talked about the makarios, the blessed ones, he meant those who participate in life with God, as God intended.

The “blesseds” follow an interesting pattern.  Starting with the poor in spirit, they seem to lay out a progression of how to move into deeper spiritual, relational, and emotional life. We are only going to cover the first three this morning, but I think you will see that progression emerge.

You might also notice that the qualities described and approved are the opposite of those that empires typically value.  Per A. W. Tozer:

“A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong side out, and saying, ‘Here is your human race.’ ”

So as we go through the Beatitudes, we are going to look at what characterizes a blessed Kingdom life with God, and by implication, what characterizes an unblessed life without God. 

We begin with the “poor in spirit.” These are the ones who understand their spiritual situation: they are broken. They are struggling with the chains of sin; they are in a spiritual battle against principalities and powers, and they have at times fought with the enemy instead of against him. But in spite of this, they are living in a blessed state. Recognizing the problem is the first step in inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.

The fact is that each person was once dead in sin and will continue to take damage points from sin on this side of heaven. As Switchfoot would say, “There ain’t no drug to make me well, ‘cause the sickness is myself.” The first beatitude gives the correct diagnosis: we need a doctor, not just to save us from death, but to continue to heal us. We have to see this to find life. We will see this later in Luke’s gospel.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

I think this first beatitude is meant to be one on which the others are built. If the original sin was pride; the original virtue – humility - is the opposite of it. And, I might add, a powerful way to engage in spiritual warfare.

The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it. (Vincent de Paul)

Kingdom people recognize their own inadequacy and insufficiency apart from God. To quote from the first step in a lot of recovery groups, “We admit that we are powerless, and our lives have become unmanageable.”

This kind of humility or ‘poorness of spirit’ is not self-loathing. It’s not incessantly focusing on our weakness, or thinking of ourselves as less than we ought. We are, after all, image bearers of God. If we are a follower of Jesus, we are an ambassador, a son or daughter of God, a temple – so much language in the Bible explaining our worth.

Humility involves not thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. It’s being realistic about the broken and sinful parts of who we are. It’s knowing the limit of our abilities; it’s seeing where we are weak and acknowledging it. The poor in spirit are very much just…honest about themselves.

The opposite is pride. The proud live in a cursed state; they think they are okay, that they are all put together. They would say, if they were in a group, “I admit that I am powerful, and my life will be what I make it.”[1] They don’t see how they are damaged and enslaved by sin, or how this unaddressed sin is hurting those around them.

If there is one sin which God hates more than another, and more sets Himself against, it is the sin of pride. Like a weed upon a dung-heap, pride grows more profusely in some soils, especially when well fertilized by rank, riches, praise, flattery, our own ignorance, and the ignorance of others…

Those, perhaps, who think they possess the least pride, and view themselves with wonderful self-admiration as the humblest of mortals, may have more pride than those who feel and confess it. (J.C. Philpot)

One of the hardest things to deal with is people who say, “I’ve got this!” when you know they don’t got that. The hardest kids to coach are not the ones who knows they are terrible; it is those who can barely dribble who think they have a shot at the NBA. The hardest person to counsel…the hardest musician to train…the hardest spouse to live with… they all follow this pattern. They have so much to prove; so much weight of being amazing; so much perfection to defend.

Here’s how C.S. Lewis describes God’s plan for the poor in spirit:

[God] wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.

He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are.

 I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

Only by stopping my attempts to rule in the Kingdom of Me, where I must increase while God and other decrease, can I enter the kingdom of God. Only by being humbly and desperately dependent on the saving and transforming grace of God can we become what God has created us to be.[2]

Next come the mourners. The context indicates that these are mourning over sin and evil; they especially mourn their own, but they also mourn the failure of mankind to live righteously.[3]They have moved beyond being aware of the problem to bemoaning the broken state of the world. The godly remnant of Jesus' day wept because of the humiliation of Israel as a result of their sin, both personal and corporate. Weeping for sins, to the Israelites, was a deeply poignant[4] act that covered personal as well as societal sin and all who participated.

Mourners are not only thinking about the situation the way God thinks about it, they are feeling about the world the way God feels about it. God grieves over the sin and brokeness of the world (Ephesians 4:30; Mark 3:5), and we should too.

This is not sadness that leads to despair (see 2 Corinthians 7:10), because God has promised comfort to his people (Isaiah 40:1; 51:3; 61:2 – 3; 66:13).  Holy sorrow is part of repentance, conversion, and virtuous action.[5] We are blessed as this drives us to the comfort of salvation. When know we are sick, and we want the cure, and we find the right doctor, we will be okay. 

In contrast, “Cursed are the hardened.” They know there is a problem, but they think it is too hard to address it. They convince themselves that they will be okay, or that’s it’s nothing to be worried about, and they detach the proper emotion from this reality, and off they go with a smile fixed on their face. They distract themselves or drown their emotions in a flood of parties, distractions, and work projects. Even if they see the diagnosis, they don’t hate the sickness enough to take the cure.

Because - let’s be honest - the cure is hard. It requires mourning. If you know anything about Old Testament precedent, it was sackcloth and ashes, and fasting. Who looks forward to mourning brokenness and failure? But….not mourning is hard too. The hardening of our lives has its own consequence. The things we use to drown our emotions will eventually drown us. The walls we build to wall off parts of ourselves we want to avoid will eventually be walls that separate us off from others, because - let’s be honest - people who refuse to address their own issues are hard to be around.

Two paths, both of which are hard. Choose the one that leads to life.

 “Which is better, to laugh or to cry? Is there anybody who wouldn’t prefer to laugh? Because repentance involves a beneficial sorrow, the Lord presented tears as a requirement and laughter as the resulting benefit…So crying is a requirement, laughter the reward, of wisdom.” - Augustine

If we want laughter (think ‘joy’) the beatitudes teach that we begin by embracing transformative sorrow. Counterintuitive, I know. But it’s the way to life, because God is at work in the midst of that process. In fact, the word used for “they shall be comforted” is parakaleo, from which we get parakletos, the Holy Spirit, our comforter who is also an advocate[6] for those whose mourning has led them to repentance and into salvation.

These first two beatitudes deliberately allude to the messianic blessing of Isaiah 61:1-3, which we have seen used by the gospel writers before. It’s the one Jesus read in his hometown to announce who he was. Here it is again:

The Lord has appointed me for a special purpose. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to repair broken hearts, and to declare to those who are held captive and bound in prison, “Be free from your imprisonment!” 2 He has sent me to announce the year of jubilee, the season of the Eternal’s favor: for our enemies it will be a day of God’s wrath; for those who mourn it will be a time of comfort. 3 As for those who grieve over Zion, God has sent me to give them a beautiful crown in exchange for ashes, to anoint them with gladness instead of sorrow, to wrap them in victory, joy, and praise instead of depression and sadness.

That’s where mourning is headed: gladness, victory, joy, and comfort. But it starts with mourning.

Then there are the gentle, or meek or humble.  The same word is used in the Greek in a variety of ways:

• bulls that pull a plow

• horses that pull a chariot

• the image in Job 39 of the war horse pawing as he waits for his rider before entering the battle.

The meek are the ones who are willing to be harnessed into the service of the Kingdom. Our pattern for meekness or gentleness[7] is Jesus, who submits to the will of His Father.

“Meekness is His enabling strength to do what His Word prescribes. It is genuine, quiet strength comfortable with self by making peace with God.” (Donald Hanna)

Though Jesus set the pattern, we need this harnessing in ways Jesus did not in order for us to flourish in this blessed life. Unharnessed, we are wild and untamed. The humble (the poor in spirit who mourn the effect of sin) know they need to be controlled, because on their own they will just tear things up; they know that they need a yoke; they know that if their life is harnessed in the right cause, they can be strong in the service of something greater than themselves. They began to gain a sense of what their life might mean to others.

In meekness, we see the beginning of a sense of community.

Because the meek are God-controlled, the Holy Spirit brings about the strength to have mastery over passions and emotions. Meekness is not passive weakness, but strength directed and under control. The meek don’t become emotionless; they have emotions harnessed to bring about good. The meek don’t become weak; their strength is harnessed to bring about good.  

• If you physically bully people, the problem isn’t that you are too strong; it’s that you use your strength to break the world instead of fix it.

• If you verbally abuse people, the problem isn’t that you can speak; it’s that you use the power of your words to bring death instead of life.

• If your emotions lash out in a way that manipulates or wounds people, the problem isn’t that you have emotions; it’s that your emotions are unharnessed and destructive.

The problem with Hurricane Ian wasn’t that there was wind and rain; it was that it was untamed and destructive. It left devastation in its wake. None of us look at that think, “Well, rain was a terrible idea.” No, we look at it and say, “Two feet of rain in a hurricane is a problem.”

So it is with the things constrained by meekness. Holy Spirit empowered meekness orders our lives for our good and the good of others. The whole world flourishes when we surrender to God’s constraint to fulfill His design.

In contrast, it is a curse to remain wild, living an unconstructive or an unstructured life. The wild don’t want authority over them; they want to do their own thing, follow their own heart, put their strength toward themselves and not bring their lives into submission to others.  They are all about the self.  I remember years ago watching a video for a Bon Jovi song called “It’s My Life.” It starts with, “This ain’t a song for the broken hearted,” so, well, shots fires toward the poor in spirit. The chorus notes that, “Like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way,’ and concludes with “It’s my life.”

Catchy song, entertaining video that tells a story of young man doing anything he can to make it to a Bon Jovi concert. But if you watch the video, the main character who embodies the song leaves a trail of chaos in his wake. The simplest is how he scatters a pack of dogs a lady is walking. He disrupts a race. He creates havoc as he runs through traffic. He vandalizes cars by running over them. He almost causes a semi with what looks like a load of fuel to crash because he jumps in front of it.  He’s mayhem from the commercials.

When I teach my ethics class at NMC, a key question that keeps coming up is this:  “What would it look like if everybody lived like you?” or “Would you like other people if they lived by your standards?” It’s a way of talking about the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would like for them to do to you.”

The meek have a sense of community. They see how their lives are situated in the midst of the lives of others. The meek seek to live out the Golden Rule: they want those around them to live with constrained power that brings about the flourishing of everyone, so they do it to.

The law of meekness is: If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, not only give him drink, (which is an act of charity), but drink to him, in token of friendship, and true love, and reconciliation; and in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, not to consume him, but to melt and soften him, that he may be cast into a new mold. (Matthew Henry)

The meek, the harnessed, the blessed, will experience reward.[8] The earth that the meek will inherit is not power or possession in this world, but the new earth, which is everlasting (Rev 21:1).[9] One day the owner of the earth will pass an inheritance on to them. The ones who know what it’s like to be stewarded know how to steward well in turn, both in this life and the next. [10] 

* * * * *

The first three beatitudes lay a foundation:

• honest brokenness over our sin

• humble mourning that leads to repentance and salvation

• harnesssed servanthood that leads to flourishing

We see here three requirements for entering into life with God and building the kind of Kingdom God has planned.

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[1] Psalm 10:4 “In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”

[2] The kingdom of heaven, where self-sufficiency is no virtue and self-exaltation is a vice, belongs to such people. (Believers Bible Commentary)

[3] They mourn over both personal and corporate sins (see Ezra 9:1–4 as an example from the Old Testament).

[4] Ezra 10:6; Psalm 51:4; Daniel 9:19-20)

[5] Orthodox Study Bible

[6] It’s not like God doesn’t know about our repentance and salvation. It’s an earthly analogy (the biblical audience knew what a parakletos was and did in society) to illustrate a spiritual reality.

[7] The same Greek word is translated “gentle” elsewhere.

[8] The specific OT allusion here is Ps 37:9, 11, 29. Entrance into the Promised Land ultimately became a pointer toward entrance into the new heaven and the new earth, the consummation of the messianic kingdom. (Expositors Bible Commentary)

[9] Orthodox Study Bible

[10] The ultimate fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, whom Paul calls “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13; cf. Heb. 11:16). (ESV Global Study Bible)

Harmony #17: Mission, Character, Message (Mark 3:7-12; Matthew 5:25; 12:15-21; Luke 6:17-19)

Jesus withdrew with a large number of his disciples to a lake, where they had gathered along with a vast multitude from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, Idumea, beyond the Jordan River, and around the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon [who] came to him when they heard about the things he had done. They came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.

Because of the crowd, he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him so the crowd would not press toward him.For he had healed many, so that all who were afflicted with diseases pressed toward him in order to touch him, because power was coming out from him and healing them all.

And those who suffered from unclean spirits were cured,[1] for whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.[2]

This fulfilled what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet: “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I take great delight. I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or extinguish a smoldering wick. Finally, justice will be victorious, and in his name the nations will hope.”

MISSIONAL OPPORTUNITY

This withdrawal happened after the Pharisees began to plot to kill him. It reads as if Jesus found out about this, and he moved on to get away from their plans. This is interesting to me, as often I think we get the message that avoiding persecution or removing ourselves from difficult or fruitless situations makes us cowardly, weak or outright unfaithful. But Jesus avoided places at times (never returning to his hometown after they tried to kill him, for example), as did Paul (Acts 9), as did the disciples at Jesus’ command.

“Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet… When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another…. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” (Matthew 10:12-14; 23)[3]

The need for Gospel truth is everywhere. Moving on from a place that needs to hear the gospel to another place that needs to hear the gospel is not always a sign of failure; it can be a sign of wisdom. We want to sow seeds of the gospel in the right kind of ground. There are times when we are on tough mission that staying is better than leaving – and times when leaving is better than staying.

The rejection of the Gospel in one place has often been the means of sending it to and establishing it in another. - Adam Clarke

This is what you see happen here. Jesus moves on to a place where he is attracting massive crowds who hear his message. Neither I nor the Bible have a formula for when we know to shake the dust off of our feet and move on and when we ought to stay. I suspect that individual people are called to different expression of faithful presence in the world when it comes to particular people or places.

• Some of you, God has built to stay in a situation or with people from which he is calling others out. You will need to fight the tendency to judge those who move on as weak.

• Some of you, God is calling to leave places or people and move one. You will need to fight the tendency to think that those who remained are probably compromised.

 I have three bits of advice that may only be worth two bits:

• Be faithfully honest about where God calls you to be and what God calls you to do. 

• Don’t require others to be you. 

• Learn from each other.

KINGDOM CHARACTER

The gospel writers describe Jesus by quoting Isaiah:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged before establishing justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:1-4)

This picture is of a bringer of justice who shows gentleness and humility while speaking (11:29).[4] One thing that impressed me when studying this week was just how counter-cultural Jesus’ approach is in probably every time and culture, and our time is no exception.

This King who is God’s “servant” will not reach His rightful place of eminence by any of the usual means of carnal force or political demagoguery. (McClain)[5]

He should not do his work in any passion or roughness, nor carry on his kingdom with any strife or violence… not crying out to stir up any sedition; not setting a trumpet to his mouth, when he had wrought a miracle, that people might take notice of it. (Matthew Poole's Commentary) 

He shall not contend…in a clamorous way, using reviling and [scornful] language, or menaces and threatenings; but, on the contrary, he silently put up all abuses, and patiently bore every affront, and behaved peaceably, quietly, committing himself and cause to a righteous God. (Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible)

The spirit of Christ is not a spirit of contention, murmuring, clamor, or [argument]. He who loves these does not belong to him. (Adam Clarke) 

I’m not sure how popular Jesus would be today. There is a new kind of ‘muscular Christianity’ – especially on social media - that reflects values that rise from the empire, not the Kingdom. This approach admires abrasiveness and even mockery, and thinks deliberately triggering offense is admirable. It get clicks and likes, builds an audience, and even jump starts careers. It’s just not Christ-like.

This is made clear in the analogies of the bruised reed and smoking flax. The weaknesses aren’t signs to pounce and finish the breaking or snuff out what life and hope was there. They are opportunities for ministry. Because I got soaked in thinking about this, I’m going to pass some what I read on to you.

“He would not trample on the dispossessed or underprivileged in order to reach His goals. He would encourage and strengthen the broken-hearted, oppressed person. He would fan even a spark of faith into a flame.” (Believers Bible Commentary) 

The “bruised reed” is the type of one broken by the weight of sorrow, or care, or sin. Such a one people in general disregard or trample on. The Christ did not so act, but sought rather to bind up and strengthen. The “smoking flax” is the wick of the lamp which has ceased to burn clearly, and the clouded flame of which seems to call for prompt extinction. Here we read a parable of the souls in which the light that should shine before men has grown dim. Base desires have clogged it; it is no longer fed with the true oil. For such, the self-righteous Pharisee had no pity; he simply gave thanks that his own lamp was burning. But the Christ in His tenderness sought, if it were possible, to trim the lamp and to pour in the oil till the flame was bright again. (Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers)

What is pictured is a ministry so gentle and compassionate that the weak are not trampled on and crushed till the full righteousness of God triumphs. Small wonder that the Gentiles ("nations") would put their hope in his name (cf. Isa 11:10; Ro 15:12). [6]

I love that we serve a God like this. How often have we been bruised, near breaking? How often has our faith, either in belief or action, smoldered instead of burned? God did not come into the world to condemn the bruised and smoldering, but to save it. Which means God does not send His people into the world to finish the breaking or extinguish the smoldering, but to take His message of salvation and hope.

GLOBAL MESSAGE: “He will proclaim justice to the nations.” 

The word for justice in Isaiah 42 is used quite a few times in the Old Testament. To give you an idea of what is expressed by this word, here’s how it is used in some other passages (there are more, but these passages capture all the uses I could find):[7]

• Genesis 19:18 – keeping the way of the Lord

• Genesis 19”25 – doing what is right

• Genesis 40:13; Exodus 21:9 – custom or manner

• Exodus 15:25; Exodus 21:1 – statute, ordinance, regulation

• Exodus 26:30 – plan

• Exodus 28:15 – making just decisions

In the Bible, justice means fulfilling mutual obligations in a manner consistent with God’s moral law. Biblical justice creates the perfect human society,[8] or perfect order.[9]

 In other words, through Jesus first and then the church, the message of the goodness of God and His Kingdom will be spread throughout the world. Where Kingdom principles of justice flourish, the kind of harmony and order God intended will follow. One thing that will tell you it’s happening is when the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks are cared for, healed and brought back to life rather than trampled.

It’s a promise about the transformative power of the gospel going everywhere. Jesus transforms individuals to be sure, but the good news does not stop there. What happens in individuals trickles out into society: family, school, church, business.

* * * * *

I’ve been having an oddly hard time organizing my thoughts on this passage. I’ve spent the week feeling like a well-ordered conclusion that wraps this up in a nice bow has been eluding me. I think I just have so many thoughts about the implications of this bouncing around in my head. So I’m just going to bounce them out to you to talk about over lunch J

1.  As we go through the gospels, each Sunday is a snapshot of Jesus that makes up a bigger picture that emerges when all the snaphshots are put together. If this is the only snapshot we see, we can forget something important: Isaiah and the gospel writers don’t say in this passage what Jesus will do to the proud and the powerful. But based on other passages, God confronts the arrogant, the cruel, the hardened in a very different way. We’ve already seen this on some level with his confrontation (and even public embarrassment) of the Pharisees. Sometimes, as was the case with Saul, getting knocked off your high horse is the kindest thing God can do for you. If you don’t see your own bruises, and the ways in which you smolder instead of burn brightly – if all you see are all the losers and failures and weakling around you - heads up. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.[10]

There is a time and a place for us to apply both these things. We will cover other scenarios as we get there. Today, let’s remember the gentle kindness Jesus has shown us, and think about what it looks like to pay that forward.

2.  Our alliances matter. Jesus’ character and message supported his mission. Our character and message need to support our mission.  Jesus rejected the witness of evil spirits even though they spoke truth in that moment.  I’m pretty sure that those with whom we consistently and publicly align ourselves ought a) to consistently share our values when it comes to character and b) consistently share our worldview when it comes to message. Are the people, groups and organizations we align ourselves building our witness with the same character and message or are they undermining it? Let’s look at some contrasts from what has come up in this passage about Jesus. Are we known for yoking with those who are:

• Abrasive and insulting or speaking truth with grace?

• Creating strife with menace and scorn or speaking with gentleness and care?

• Arrogant and pompous or humble and kind?

• Deceptive or truthful?

• Trampling the wounded and struggling or protecting them?

• Crushing the poor and powerless or helping them?

• Dismantling justice or building it?

Why does this matter? Because we will be connected to the company we keep.

“Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble.” (Proverbs 13:20) 

“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” (1 Corinthians 15:33)

I’m also not suggesting there is never a good reason to seek justice in the world by uniting with others who share our passion for a common good. I’m just wanting us to consider that we need to be careful with whom and how deeply we yoke. When two parties get too intertwined, people will assume those yoked together are on the same mission. “Unequal yokes” can be deeply, deeply confusing.[11] We must consistently walk those who are wise and of good character.

3.  This passage should reorient how we think about ourselves when we see our bruises through the smoldering ruins in our lives. Shame can be powerful. Self-loathing is such a heavy burden. We can look at our lives and just see failure and disaster. But Jesus doesn’t plan to dismiss us, shame us, or rub it in. He’s here to heal and restore. He plans to turn our shack into a temple. If God is for us, let’s not give up on us. Our history is not our destiny when Jesus is in the house.  

4.  This passage should reorient how we think about and respond to others. Neither Isaiah nor Jesus said why people were bruised or smoldering. They just were, and that was enough for Jesus to bring humble, gentle nourishment that brought healing and hope to the sick and hopeless. Other people abused and wounded them? Jesus was there to gently show them how to re-order their lives in the glorious and healing truth about Christ and His Kingdom. Those broken by their own sin or dumb choices? Jesus was there to gently show them how to re-order their lives in the glorious and healing truth about Christ and His Kingdom.  The Good Samaritan didn’t ask why that guy got beat up. He just helped him because he was beat up. The Good Shepherd didn’t ask why that one sheep wandered off. He just went and got him. This is how grace works. We don’t need to deserve it. God gives it to us because we need it.

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14

So while we lunch together today, remember that you are sitting across from someone who I promise you has bruises somewhere, and whose candles are down to the nub somewhere. Love them well. And then do it again next Sunday J

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[1] Side note: I’ve heard (in some Christian circles) the idea that all sickness = spiritual attack. This paragraph alone demonstrates that’s not accurate. There are those who are simply sick; there are others in whom evil spirits bring about sickness.

[2] Why does Jesus silence them? In the first-century setting, most would have considered it ominous for demons to shout out a name in recognition. They would assume either Jesus and demons were connected, or that they were attempting to control him by pronouncing his divine name. (This comes up later with the Pharisees, who accuse him of casting out demons by the power of the devil.) I suspect Jesus silenced them because he would not receive the witness of evil spirits. He didn’t want voices of evil preparing the way of the Lord. Jesus doesn’t want there to be any confusion about with whom he had aligned himself.

[3] Adam Clarke says, in relation to Jesus leaving the Pharisee’s murderous environment:

It is the part of prudence and Christian charity not to provoke, if possible, the blind and the hardened…a man of God is not afraid of persecution; but, as his aim is only to do good, by proclaiming everywhere the grace of the Lord Jesus, he departs from any place when he finds the obstacles to the accomplishment of his end are, humanly speaking, invincible.” - Adam Clarke

[4] Expositors Bible Commentary

[5] Believers Bible Commentary

[6] Expositors Bible Commentary

[7] “By judgment, understand the Gospel, and by victory its complete triumph over Jewish opposition and Gentile impiety. He will continue by these mild and gentle means to work till [Christianity is brought to the whole world], and the universe filled with his glory.” (Adam Clarke).

[8] ESV Global Study Bible

[9] NIV Study Bible Notes

[10] James 4:6

[11] “Several years ago, a combative atheist wrote that his fellow atheists should drop the word atheism because it gave too much weight to theism. The ultimate goal, he argued, was not to spread atheism but to emphasize that belief in God is so lacking in credibility that it doesn’t deserves to be seriously entertained. His arguments included no little sarcasm about the perceived stupidity of Christianity, along with strategies to move people away from their supernatural “myths” toward what he saw as realism—a world without God. That same atheist spoke at a recent pastors’ conference. He has appeared in videos by evangelical groups to accuse other evangelicals of being “woke” and—in an unacknowledged, dizzying irony—of denying the sufficiency of Scripture. In his view, the dividing line between the “sheep” and the “goats” is the “correct” view on political causes, not belief in Christ or fidelity to the gospel.”  - Russell Moore, “The Rise of the Evangelical Heretic,” Christianity Today

Sabbath Rest

So, Jesus said the Sabbath was “for” us. We talked about that being true of the Law in general; today, I want to talk about the rest that is the gift of the Sabbath in the Old Testament and the Lord’s Day in the New. Let’s begin with the passages in the Old Testament that talk about the command to the Israelites to honor the Sabbath.  

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. ‘Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you….The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. (Exodus 31: 12-16)

 “Sabbath” is related to the Hebrew word for “rest.” It is the only one of the 10 Commandments given as a covenant sign. We see elsewhere in the Old Testament that covenants have signs: the sign of the Noahic covenant is the rainbow (Gen. 9:8–17); the sign of the Abrahamic covenant is circumcision (Gen. 17).[1]

The observance of Sabbath was a constant re-honoring of the covenant between God and Israel.  It was an act of covenant renewal, a reminder of and a refocusing on the God with whom they had a covenant. Resting wasn’t just for personal renewal; it was for relational renewal with God.

As the Jewish people came to understand it, their primary duty was to stop working. We might think about it as getting out of the ‘rat race,’ but it became a lot more than that. Over time, the rabbis listed 39 categories of Sabbath work that was out of bounds.  This was called “putting a fence around the Torah,” a well-intentioned effort to make sure they honored God as precisely and carefully as possible. See if this list makes you restful.

• ripping up a piece of paper or sharpening a pencil was forbidden since it resembles “cutting to shape” or could be confused with it.[2]

• agreeing to buy something was prohibited, because #“writing”

• climbing a tree is forbidden, because it may lead to breaking twigs or tearing leaves, which could be construed as “reaping” (i.e., separating part of a growing plant from its source)

• adding fresh water to a vase of cut flowers (“sowing” — any activity that causes or furthers plant growth).

• Opening an umbrella or unfolding a screen (“building”).

• Wearing eyeglasses not permanently required (“carrying” from private to public domain and vice versa).[3]

• You could carry on your property, but on public property you could only carry the clothes you needed to wear – even keys and handkerchiefs had to be left at home.

• They didn’t blow a temple shofar when Rosh Hashana happened on the Sabbath. Sure, there was a shofar at the temple, but what if it got broken and someone had to carry one there to replace it?

• A Sabbath’s journey could be no longer than 2,000 cubits (3,000 feet) from one’s house. In some parts of Israel today, residents have been known to throw stones at those driving through their neighborhoods on Shabbat. However, they must set aside the stones for use on Shabbat.[4]

 There is some irony here: Sabbath was supposed to remind them how God freed them from bondage, and it turned into bondage to the Law.[5]  Which wasn’t the point at all.  Sabbath was a gift designed to bring us rest. That doesn’t sound like rest.[6]

While it is the only one of the Ten Commandment given as a covenant sign, it is also the only commandment referred to as a type pointing toward the True Sabbath. Many of the New Testament writers compared Sabbath to the other covenant sign, circumcision: both were physical ways of enacting a covenant with God; both were now enacted spiritually in Christ.

“True circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart—by the Spirit, not the letter. “(Romans 2:28-29)

"Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." (Colossians 2:16-18)[7] 

“There still remains a place of rest, a true Sabbath, for the people of God because those who enter into salvation’s rest lay down their labors in the same way that God entered into a Sabbath rest from His.” (Hebrews 4:9-10)

 Literal Sabbath Day rest functioned as important reminder of the spiritual rest in Christ. The seriousness with which the Old Testament treats the observance of Sabbath rest was admirable, but Jesus pointed out that so many of the Pharisee’s laws were missing the point of Sabbath. Sabbath is for us. It had become a burden to keep, and it should not have been a burden. It should have been a blessing. After all, 

"Sabbath isn't about resting perfectly; it's about resting in the One who is perfect." - Shelly Miller

Jesus didn’t un-command it, but – like all the times he said, “You have heard it said…but I say unto you,” he clarified that there was something more going on. I like how Justin Martyr summarized it about 100 years after Jesus’ death:

“The new law requires you to keep perpetual sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you…if there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent… if any one has impure hands, let him wash and be pure. Then he has kept the sweet and true sabbaths of God.“

 One of the reasons Sunday rose in importance vs. Saturday in the early church had to do with the question of where we find rest in New Covenant enacted by Jesus.

• In the Old Covenant, rest followed our work at the end of the week (Saturday) Once we had accomplished, we got a reward for what we did.

• In the New Covenant, it is only after resting in Christ’s completed work for us on the first day of the week (Sunday) that we even begin our work. Our rest comes not from what we did, but from what Jesus did.

• The Sabbath commemorated the first creation; the Lord’s Day is linked with the new creation. The Sabbath day was a day of responsibility; the Lord’s Day is a day of privilege.[8]

The new covenant radically alters the Sabbath perspective. Current believers do not first labor six days, looking hopefully towards rest. Instead, they begin the week by rejoicing in the rest already accomplished by the cosmic event of Christ’s resurrection. Then they enter joyfully into their six days of labor. - O. Palmer Robertson, (slightly modified)

“The Sabbath teaches us that we do not work to please God. Rather, we rest because God is already pleased with the work, he has accomplished in us.” A.J. Swoboda

I want to talk more about resting in God’s completed work in us by looking at some principles for observing and experiencing rest in Jesus as an ongoing experience, not just something we pursue one day a week. Let’s start by expanding our view of a verse we looked at last week.

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is usefully kind, and my burden is light.”—Matthew 11:28-30

Come to Jesus and take His yoke.  “Take my yoke” was a common saying of rabbis. It meant, “If you are going to be a disciple, you must obey my teachings and follow my example.” If you want rest – deep, spiritual rest of the heart and soul - don’t pursue rest. Pursue Jesus. Jesus will lead you to rest.

Learn about Jesus, and you will find rest for your souls.    Rest is connected to trust. My cat sleeps on me without a care in the world because she trusts me. If you trust the driver, you can rest on a trip. I can bare my soul to my wife because I trust her. Rest is connected with trust. If you can’t seem to rest in Christ, learn more about a Savior you can trust.

Is there a formula for how we can practically experience this rest (and I’m talking about soul rest that permeates every aspect of our life)? Formula is not the right word, but there are habits (spiritual disciplines) that are helpful. I am going to offer a couple ideas built from a list taken from some of Tim Keller’s writing on the Sabbath. 

First, consciously enjoy[9] God and His good gifts. Practice acknowledgment of God throughout the day by improving purposeful contact with God.  

• Consciously appreciate salvation, sanctification, grace, forgiveness, the fruit of the spirit, the love and faithfulness of God: basically, the good and perfect gifts given to us by Jesus.

• Celebrate the freedom Jesus offers from all kinds of slavery: slavery to sin, slavery to achieve, slavery to impress, slavery to earn, slavery to addictions of all kinds, slavery to your past, slavery to the gnawing need to be good enough to matter…

• Consciously rest in the identity we have in Christ. We are loved children. We aren’t perfect children, but God’s love for us never depends on our perfection. It flows from His.   

 Second, do something that frees you from the tyranny of being amazing.  This has to do with accomplishing, making a mark on the world, being noticed. The rabbis who created the “fence around the Torah” understood the importance of getting out of the rhythm of the ‘rat race’ and into the rhythm of the Kingdom.

"If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop, because our work is never completely done... Sabbath ... liberates us from the need to be finished." —Wayne Muller

It turns out that the world turns even when we take time off! (I know, right?) Israelites had to let their fields lie fallow every seventh year. (Leviticus 25:1–7). This stopped them from over farming.  They could enjoy whatever grew on its own. You need time to make sure you don’t “overfarm” your life or your schedule; plan fallow time, and enjoy it. Consciously let God take care of the ‘being amazing’ part.

• some meals can just be Ramen noodles and leftovers

• your house can be a mess when people come over

• your lawn doesn’t have to be immaculate all the time

• you can let down your guard and cry in front of others

• you can show up at church looking like you need a hug

• you can let your burdens show, and ask others to help you.

• you can make mistakes, do dumb stuff, show up grumpy, post something you regret

• you can own your sin in front of God and others

• you can go back and apologize (which, I know, means you were wrong in what you did or said or thought)

I love this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor:

“At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the toolshed and turn off the computer. Stay home, not because you are sick but because you are well. Talk someone you love into being well with you. Take a nap, a walk, and hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than you can produce – that even if you spent one whole day of being good for nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight.  

And when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so – remember that your own conviction is not required. This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. The purpose of the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.”

 You can’t be amazing all the time.  Jesus knows this – and friends, I hope we all do too. God forbid we use this as an excuse to be lazy, but God forbid we don’t rest in a Divine love that has covered a multitude of our sins and imperfections on the Cross.

Sabbath ceasing means to cease not only from work itself, but also from the need to accomplish and be productive, from the worry and tension that accompany our modern criterion of efficiency, from our efforts to be in control of our lives as if we were God, from our possessiveness and our enculturation, and, finally, from the humdrum and meaninglessness that result when life is pursued without the Lord at the center of it all. —Marva J. Dawn

When we are weak, the strength of God shines. His glory is perfected in our weakness. We don’t try to be weak so His glory can abound, but we rest in knowing that God uses our worst to point toward His best.

Plan rhythms that lead to spiritual rest. Notice fear/worry/anxiety and invite the peace of Christ.  I don’t know what your schedule is. Sometimes we are at a place in life when we have time to stop everything and carve out chunks of time. Sometimes our days (or weeks or months) keep us hopping. Either way, 

• I can breath a prayer in the checkout line instead of check my phone.

• I can listen to music in my truck that points me toward God.

• I can download a Bible App or get a short devotional book that orients my mind.

• For parents with young kids, bring ‘em to church when we offer stuff for kids and take some time to re-orient and rest.  Hmmm…I bet a ministry of babysitting would be deeply appreciated….

It is so easy to get swept up in life – it comes at us relentlessly at times. Paul summarized the solution this way in Philippians 4:

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Do something that refreshes you when you can. Hopefully, the things mentioned above do that. In addition, there are activities you (hopefully) have time and opportunity to do in addition to engaging in church fellowship and worship. Enjoy things that are good and that you find beautiful, and thank God for it. I know what those things are for me: puzzles and podcasts; fishing; napping (is that recreation?), gardening, sitting by a fire pit and watching a sunset… I’m not sure what they are for you. I just think they involve enjoying God’s good world. Find the green pastures and still waters that restore your soul.

Focus on passing on the grace God has given to us. I love this account of what an early Lord’s Day observance looked like in the church. This is from around A.D. 155. 

 “ And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.  

Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.  

And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who supports the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.  

But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.

For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration. (Justin Martyr, First Apology Chapter LXVII.—Weekly worship of the Christians. [A.D. 155])

Contribute to restful spaces. In relationships, seek peace and as much as it is up to you, and pursue it. (Psalm 34:14) As much as is possible, live at peace with all. (Romans 12:18) Like Jesus said, peacemakers are blessed. (Matthew 5:9) Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

 Let the Lord who leads us into the Sabbath rest of salvation rule and reign your heart and mind such that those around us experience the peace God has given us. Peacemaking can involve hard truth and bold confrontation at times – but it will never be absent the kind of Christ-centered agape love that motivates to be broken and spilled out as we work for the good of God’s image bearers and children.

“I have come to think that the moment of giving the bread of Eucharist as gift is the quintessential center of the notion of Sabbath rest in Christian tradition. It is gift! We receive in gratitude. Imagine having a sacrament named “thanks”! We are on the receiving end, without accomplishment, achievement, or qualification. It is a gift, and we are grateful!” ― Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance

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[1] Circumcision was not unique to the Israelites. Egyptians, for example, appear to have used circumcision as an act of initiation or rite of passage for boys entering manhood. Circumcision was an act of initiation; the style of circumcision showed what you had been initiated into. This may seem odd to us, but it made sense to everyone in the Ancient Near East. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55911658.pdf

[2] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shabbats-work-prohibition/

[3] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shabbats-work-prohibition/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_on_Shabbat#cite_note-23

[5] “Anyone who cannot obey God's command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you… Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave—not to your culture's expectations, your family's hopes, your medical school's demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph...” -Keller

[6] “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath…our accidents create Sabbath for us.”  ― Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives He doesn’t mean that if you get sick or dangerously sloppy, it’s always because you dishonored God’s command to rest. His point is that our bodies need rest, and if we don’t set time aside for to rest our bodies (as best we can), our bodies keep score in some fashion. For me, it was a nervous breakdown. God didn’t smite me: my body needed rest that I wasn’t giving it.

[7] “So, when you ask why a Christian does not keep the Sabbath, if Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, my reply is, that a Christian does not keep the Sabbath precisely because what was prefigured in the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ. For we have our Sabbath in Him who said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Augustine, reply to Faustus,Book XIX.-9)

[8] Believer’s Bible Commentary

[9] Also got some good ideas here: https://tifwe.org/the-sabbath-and-your-work/

Harmony #16: The Sabbath Was Made For Us (Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5)

At that time Jesus was going through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick some heads of wheat, rub them in their hands, and eat them.[1] But when some of the Pharisees saw this they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is against the law to do on the Sabbath.”

To be clear, the Old Testament does not prohibit this; the disciples were not farmers doing a harvest on the Sabbath. The Pharisees’ objections were based on an oral tradition that had grown in complexity over time.[2] Here we are, back to the old wineskins of tradition. This suggests we are going to learn something new about the Sabbath as opposed to how the Pharisees understood it.

Mark 2:25-26; Matthew 12:4-5 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry— how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, took and ate the sacred bread,[3] which is against the law for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to his companions?  Or have you not read in the law that the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and yet are not guilty?”

Jesus is using a Jewish hero to highlight a clear precedent in the Old Testament:  God’s laws were never meant to stop us from doing good or necessary things. In addition, the priests technically violated the Sabbath by working as they offered sacrifices and did other duties on the Sabbath (Num. 28:9, 10), yet they were considered blameless.[4]

At minimum, Jesus is pointing out that the Pharisees are not consistent with how they understand the Law. At maximum, they have badly missed the point and turned Sabbath observance into something God never intended for it to be.

Matthew 12:6-7; Mark 2:27-28” I tell you that something greater than the temple [Jesus and His Kingdom] [5] is here.If you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.”Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. For this reason the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

There was active debate in Judaism concerning how much a person was willing to sacrifice to give honor to God and his holy day. This went beyond the actual act animal sacrifice; this included how much one was willing to hurt: financially, emotionally, physically, etc. It was as if the most holy were the most self-deprived; the ones who were hurt the most by the Sabbath must understand it the best.

The Qumran community was more rigorous than most: “No one should help an animal give birth on the Sabbath day. And if he makes it fall into a well or a pit, he should not take it out on the Sabbath” (CD 11:13–14). Even if people fell into water, others were not to take them out by using a ladder or a rope or a utensil (CD 11:16–17).[6]

Jesus does not challenge the institution of the Sabbath; Jesus points out the actual intent of the Sabbath—to bring rest and well-being in the context of valuing mercy.[7] The Sabbath was given by God as a gift to us, but the Pharisees had made it a burden at best and a contest at worst.

Luke 6:6-11; Mark 3:1-7a; Matthew 12:9-15a On another Sabbath, after Jesus left that place, he entered the synagogue and was teaching. Now a man was there whose right hand was withered. The experts in the law and the Pharisees watched Jesus closely, and asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” so they could find a reason to accuse him.

But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to the man who had the withered hand, “Get up and stand here among all these people.” So he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good and heal on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or to destroy it?” But they were silent.

Jesus said to them, “Would not any one of you, if he had one sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, take hold of it and lift it out?[8] How much more valuable is a person than a sheep![9] So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

After looking around at them all in anger, grieved by the hardness of their hearts, Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.[10] But the Pharisees, filled with mindless rage, went out immediately and began debating with one another, plotting with the Herodians against him, as to how they could assassinate him.

Jesus contends that the higher principle on the Sabbath is not abstaining from activity but doing good.[11] The Law has always been for our good and the good of others, to the glory of God. Should our understanding of the commands of God prevent us from flourishing as human beings bearing God’s image, or if our understanding of the Law hinders us from loving God or others well, we are misunderstanding his commands.

I want to take time today to talk about the implications of the Sabbath being made for us. I think the principle Jesus explains here holds true of all of God’s laws that describe righteous living. They are for us. They are intended to help us flourish as God designed us to flourish. The Old Wineskin of the Pharisees was that the yoke of the Law was a harsh burden; the New Wineskin is that the yoke of righteous living is a gift. 

Matthew places the two stories about the Sabbath immediately after Jesus told his disciples,

“My yoke is easy (xrestos,[12] “usefully kind”); my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30)

Following Jesus means we are yoked with him into his service. It’s an image that a farming community would have understood. We are yoked with Jesus into the Law of Love that, when lived out, looks (in many ways) an awful lot like the moral[13] Law revealed in the Old Testament. While Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial and purity laws, he actually upped the expectations in the moral law[14] while simultaneously stressing it would be kind and easy. So, how does that work?

The Law was given within the context of the overall story of God’s work in the world. The story in which the Law appears begins with Creation, with a God of power and care and personality who pulls order from chaos, light from darkness, mankind from dust, who created a world and called it good.  Part of the goodness was seen in a world of boundaries:  the sea and land had their place; there was a difference between the plant and animal kingdom; there was another division between people and the rest of Creation.  God placed Adam and Eve in garden of paradise, but even that garden had boundaries. 

The goodness became corrupted, however, and the father and mother of humanity learned quickly what we all learn at some point in our lives:  Like everything else in God’s creation, we need boundaries, or we will destroy what is good within and around us.  

Jump ahead in the story of God to the Exodus of God’s chosen people from the land of bondage in Egypt.  It’s almost another creation event: a new nation arises from a land of bondage and spiritual darkness and moral chaos.  And once again, God gives boundaries. 

The story is not taking a new path.  The Old Testament laws given at Mount Sinai were an integral part of the ongoing revelation of a God who specializes in taking things that seem chaotic, and frightening, and oppressive, and making something new.  And that new thing always involves boundaries.

We see in Exodus the echoing of the a similar story line begun in Genesis: order from chaos; light from darkness; a good thing from a bad thing; a story that has continued throughout history, from the biggest of world events to the smallest of individual lives.  God does this over, and over, and over again. 

At Mount Sinai, he offered them a covenant as a groom to a bride. Exodus 24: 7 specifically says the Law was the “Book of the Covenant.”  This Covenant has been compared to a Hebrew marriage ceremony, like a prenuptial agreement that clarifies what our obligations are to God if we choose to covenant with him. The Hebrews would have recognized this as the ketubah, a legal document agreed upon and signed by both parties.  It was a comprehensive summary of the expectations of this covenant relationship explaining the kind of behavior that was consistent with covenant membership. The bride and groom were to be clear about what they were agreeing to enter into, and what it would take for this relationship to work. 

Some translations phrase this God-given ketubah, the Ten Commandments, as, “You will not recognize any other gods….you will not take the name of the Lord in vain…you will not kill. “  Future tense.  God seemed to be saying,  “If you want to covenant with me, this is what this covenant will look like.”  It was as if God, the groom, was saying,  “Do you, Israel, take me, to have and to hold, from the day on, for better…worse… rich…poor... in sickness and in health…”  And Israel responded, “We do.”

The Law was not given as a means of salvation, but as a gift from a gracious God to allow His people to know Him better and to flourish in their design and their relationship with God.

The Hebrew people embraced this revelation. It put ethical, Godly living directly within reach of the most ordinary of people. David places the law alongside Creation as one of the great declarations of God:

“The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. 
The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes. They are more precious than gold, they are sweeter than honey…” (Psalm 19:7-10)

Think of this maybe as an instruction manual. They come with almost everything you buy if it has any complexity at all. “Use it this way and things will go well; use it that way and you will break it and probably whatever it is you are working on.”                                                              

The Israelites were called to live a particular way that, when understood and lived rightly, would bring wisdom, joy, and insight. In addition to this individual benefit, keeping Law was a means of showing the character of God to the rest of the world (Duet. 4:5-8):

“ See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people."  What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?”

Jesus himself made clear in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) the power of obedient living as a means of evangelism. Jesus told his audience:

“You are the light of the world… let your light shine before people, so that they can see your good deeds and give honor to your Father in heaven.”

Immediately, he follows that up with this:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them.18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place… 19  whoever obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

When righteous deeds follow transformed hearts, people will see those good works and glorify God. Love-inspired obedience is a fantastic witness to the goodness and wisdom of God. God’s revelation of Himself and His way was always meant to benefit the world, not just the individuals who love and follow Him.

• Because God was compassionate, they were to show compassion.

• Because God was generous, they were to be generous.

• Because God forgave them, they were to forgive others.

• Because God loved them, they were to love their spouse or kids or neighbors.

Righteous actions and godly living was never reduced merely to what one person’s life looked like; it was always understood in the context of community and the world. How will our Godly or ungodly decisions effect the world around us? Will it bring order or chaos? Life or death?

Time after time, the Old Testament showed that if the people forgot God and went after other gods, their society would be characterized by injustice, oppression, cruelty and excess. The principle is one that transcends times and cultures: If you choose the wrong God, you get the wrong society. This pattern seems clear in world history.

• When our gods are constantly at war, we generally turn to  violence for problem-solving; we see those who have the ability to be effectively and proficiently violent as heroes.

• When our gods are all about sex, we tend to associate “the good life” with good sex and base our identity/worth in our sexiness (the degree to which others desire us).

• When we worship gods of wealth, the only “good life” is the rich life, and greed and exploitation flourish as we willingly sacrifice those around us in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

• When we worship gods of luxury, we associate comfort and pleasure with the “good life,” and we demand these things as a right as we order our lives around them.

• When we worship gods of power, we will loved manipulation and control above all else and see the acquisition of power as the answer to the world’s problems as well as our own.

• When we worship gods of freedom/independence, we eventually demanded radical unaccountability to anyone but ourselves so that we can “do that which is right in our own eyes.”[15]

  The god you choose will be reflected in the culture, because the people’s priorities always reflect the priorities of their gods. Here are a few examples to make my point.

1. In many of the cultures surrounding the Hebrews, possessions were of more worth than human life. One’s life was forfeit for theft or property damage; if the people wanted a good crop harvest, they killed other people. Gods of corn and stone idols required the elevation of corn and stone, not the people around them.  Not in Israel.  Possessions never were more important than life, because one of those things was created in the image of God, and it wasn’t the property.  So theft required restitution, not death; bad crops were never cause to kill people (or anything). If you choose the wrong God, you get the wrong set of cultural priorities.

2. The French Revolution was a decidedly atheistic, humanistic attempt to change the world.  Voltaire, one of the fathers of the movement, had a statue of Diana, the Goddess of Reason in his home.  The results were disastrous. When Madame Roland was brought to the guillotine in 1792 on false charges, she bowed mockingly toward the statue of liberty in Place de la Revolution and said, “Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name.”[16] If you choose the wrong God, you destroy liberty and freedom.

3. Hitler, ironically, referred to the law given to the Jewish nation as the “life-denying 10 Commandments.”  In the process of trying to eradicate the chosen people of the “tyrannical God” whose commands robbed people of life, he experimented on and slaughtered millions of people he considered sub-human. The legacy of Nazi eugenics and racism has lived on around the world in many terrible ways over the decades since, always at the expense of the value, dignity and too often the life of people. If you choose the wrong God, you get a false view of the value of human life.

4. Alfred Kinsey, who has set the tone of sexual discussion in the 1950’s, viewed humans not as people who bore God’s image, but as little more than animals. When he researched human sexuality, he expected to find that people behaved like animals, and (surprise!) he did. Perhaps that is why the closing credits in the 2004 film “Kinsey,” a film meant to celebrate the man who liberated us from all the old-fashioned Jude-Christian prudishness about sex, show nature films of animals copulating in the background. If you choose the wrong God, you get a false view of sexuality.

This list could go on and on. How we feel about God has implications far beyond living a personally ethical life and feeling good about our decisions.  Worship has a ripple effect. Nothing exists in a vacuum, especially our moral choices. 

Perhaps that is why there is an order to the commands:  The first four are about God, the last six about people. If you begin with a correct view of God, you end with a correct view of people. It’s the same order Jesus gave:  “Love the Lord…love your neighbors.” As Lauren Winner notes inReal Sex:

“The Mosaic law does…protective work, pointing to, guarding, and returning God’s people to the created order, the world as God meant it to be…To see the Biblical witness as an attempt to direct us to the created order…is to recognize the true goodness of God’s creation…the law cares for us and protects us, written by a lawgiver who understands that life outside of God’s created intent destroys us.  Life lived inside the contours of God’s law harmonizes us and makes us beautiful.  It makes us creatures living well in the created order.  It gives us the opportunity to become who we are meant to be.”

Just as the Sabbath was made to serve us, God’s righteous boundaries serve us as an instruction manual from the Creator that shows what is good. It gives us the opportunity to become, with God’s help, the kind of faithfully present image bearers He intends for us to be.

If I would call you to something this morning, it’s this: Remember that the Creator’s ‘owners manual’ about who you are and how you are designed to live is for our good. It is for us.  Obedience does not in itself bring us salvation; that work was done by Jesus on the cross. Being yoked with Jesus into living out the Law of Love is God’s design for us to find and to bring flourishing life to the world, for our good and the glory of the One who has shown us what it means to truly live.

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[1] At least one Galilean, Rabbi Yehuda, was in agreement with Jesus and permitted rubbing grain in the hands on the Sabbath. This may be an example of a rift between Galilean rabbis and Jerusalem rabbis. (NIV First Century Study Bible)

[2] ESV Reformation Study Bible

[3] Twelve loaves of bread were baked and placed in the tabernacle each Sabbath as an offering. The bread was to be eaten by the priests (Lev. 24:5–9). (ESV Global Study Bible)

[4] Believer’s Bible Commentary

[5] So what is the “something  greater than the temple”?

· It’s Jesus, Immanuel (“God with us”), is the true temple, to whom the symbol pointed (John 1:14; 2:21).. Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath fulfills all aspects of the meaning of the Sabbath (Col. 2:16, 17).[5]

·The kingdom of God.[5] The Sabbath is a symbol of God’s sovereignty over the whole created universe (Ex. 20:8). It is a reminder of His redemption of His people (Deut. 5:12), and it is a representation of the hope of eternal rest that begins spiritually now and extends into eternity

· Both. It’s the kingdom Jesus is inaugurating as the one who ushers in the Messianic Age.  (Expositor’s Bible Commentary)

[6] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Of The New Testament

[7] ESV Global Study Bible

[8] The Dead Sea Scrolls community specifically prohibited removing an animal from a pit on the Sabbath. It’s possible Jesus was directly challenging their interpretation. (NIV First Century Study Bible)

[9] Jesus seems to have been employing a rabbinic teaching technique called qal v’homer (“light then heavy”). This system of logic pitted one idea against another by using the phrase “how much more.” (Ibid)

[10] It is worthy of remark, that as the man was healed with a word, without even a touch, the Sabbath was unbroken, even according to their most rigid interpretation of the letter of the law. (Adam Clarke)

[11] NIV Grace and Truth Study Bible

[12] Fun fact: It "appears as a spelling variant for the unfamiliar Christus (Xristos).” (HELPS Word Studies) 

[13] Largely distinct from ceremonial and purity laws….sermon for another time.

[14] From Matthew 5: 21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment… 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart….38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person... 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighborand hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

[15] Judges 21:25

[16] Peter had to warn the new church pretty quickly: “Don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil.” (1 Peter 2:16)

Harmony #15: New Wineskins (Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39; Matthew 9:14-17)

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, this account follows on heals of the feast that Matthew, the tax collector, threw for Jesus after Jesus called him to be a disciple. I suspect they will connect.

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.[1] So they came to Jesus and said, “John’s disciples frequently fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but your disciples continue to eat and drink and don’t fast.”

Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast and mourn while the bridegroom[2] is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they do not fast. [3] But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and at that time they will fast.” (Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33;Matthew 9: 14-15)

Let’s talk about this bride/bridegroom imagery. God in the Old Testament was portrayed as a groom to His bride, Israel.

“Your Maker is your husband—the LORD Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth” (Isaiah 54:5).[4]

But the prophets portrayed Israel as committing spiritual adultery by worshiping false gods and forsaking Yahweh. Eventually, God passed this message on through Jeremiah:

“I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. . . . Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood [idols].” (Jeremiah 3:8–10).

To make matters worse, God (through Jeremiah) asked a rhetorical question:

“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again?” (Jeremiah 3:1).

According to the Law, no. A man who had divorced his wife could not remarry her (Deuteronomy 24:1–4). Israel had been divorced by God, so, according to the law, that was it. No second chances. However…

“‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful…I will not be angry forever… I am your husband. I will choose you . . . and bring you to Zion” (Jeremiah 3:12-14).’”[5]

The law forbade that a divorced wife return and be restored, but Jesus had just told them (in relation to calling and feasting with tax collectors and sinners) that he required mercy more than the ritualistic sacrifices that kept the letter of the law but not the spirit of it.[6] Here, he illustrated God showing mercy through Jesus to an undeserving and faithless people. 

This marriage language continues throughout the New Testament.

• Paul notes in Ephesians 5:32 that marriage is a mystery, like the marriage of Christ and the church.

• Revelation 19 makes a pretty big deal about the future marriage supper of the Lamb, which is the feasting imagery for an eternity that the bride, the church, will spend with their Divine groom.[7]

So when Jesus said a time of wedding feasting had arrived, he was making an important claim: the exile was over, the divorce had ended; the groom (God) and the bride (God’s people) were reunited through Jesus. The age of the Messiah had begun.[8]  That was a cause for feasting.

He also told them a parable: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk new cloth on an old garment, because the new patch will pull away from the old garment and the tear will be worse. The piece from the new will not match the old.  

And no one pours new wine[9] into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  Instead new wine must be poured into new wineskins.  No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ “ [10] (Luke 5:36-39; Matthew 9:16;Mark 2:21-22)

Jesus’ illustrations announced the arrival of a New Era, which we refer to as the New Covenant and which is revealed in the New Testament.

There have been 3 main ways people have understood these short parables to be making that point, mainly because it seems like the new wine is preferable here, but that seems at odds with the last comment about the old wine being better b) there are differences of opinion about what the old garment/wineskins represent.

OLD/NEW WINE = OLD/NEW COVENANT

One approach is to see Jesus declaring radical break between the Old Covenant through Moses and the New Covenant through Jesus.

• “God never intended Christianity to patch up Judaism; it was a new departure.”[11]

• “Grace and law, God’s righteousness and man’s, will never mix. The new wine of the gospel must be placed in the new wineskin of grace, not into the old one of law.”[13] 

• “The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law.”[14]

 Clearly, there is a reason the New Covenant Jesus establishes is called “New.” But I’m not sure Jesus was intending to create an almost antagonism between the Old and New to such a degree that it almost sounds like we would be better off chopping off the first half of our Bible. That is clearly not how Jesus or the New Testament writers saw the Old Testament.

It’s not so clean as “didn’t have the Spirit”/”now have the Spirit.” The Spirit works and moves in the Old Covenant; the time of exile between the Old and New Testament was a time that the Jewish people mourned what they perceived as the removal of God’s Spirit.[15] Though the Holy Spirit now lives within, the Holy Spirit always lived with God’s people and “came upon them” at times.

It’s not a clean “OT era is irrelevant”/”NT era is all that matters.” Jesus and the New Testament writers constantly referred to the Old Testament, calling it Scripture that was God-breathed and capable of completing us and equipping us for every good work.[16] They didn’t ditch it at all; they built on the foundations in the Old Covenant to explain life in the New Covenant (and used the New Covenant to clarify the purpose of the Old Covenant).

It’s not a clean “The Old Testament was all Law”/ The New Testament is all Grace.” Grace actually saturates the Old Testament,[17] though clearly that message had been lost on Jesus’ audience of Pharisees. Jesus himself said that he didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.[18] It’s not as if the Law no longer offers a constraint that keeps us in the path of righteousness. If life is like bowling, the Law is the bumpers that keep us from rolling into the ditches of sin. And, as Paul makes clear, there is a very foundational New Covenant Law that was already captured in the 10 Commandments:

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

That’s what is often referred to The Law Of Love – in the New Covenant. So, I don’t think law and grace are enemies. God established them both; they both play a God-ordained purpose when rightly understood and rightly applied to our lives,[19] namely, obedience as a response to God rather than a means to God.

Something new is bursting forth in the New Covenant, but it’s a fulfillment of that to which the Old was pointing, a fulfillment in which the role of God’s amazing grace in the midst of our bumbling human effort is featured front and center as the only hope on which we build a foundation that will last into eternity.

OLD WINESKINS = TRADITIONS/NEW WINE =BIBLICAL TRUTH

Another perspective is that the old garments and old wineskins are a reference to traditions established over the centuries by the rabbis that arose around the Bible and not from the Bible. In Mark, the Pharisees are told:

“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” (7:9).

Jesus’ new message of true faith and true worship was going to mess up those old traditions. In this reading, the new wine and new garments  are Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets rightly understood, and the old garment and old wineskins as what the Pharisees in the first century called the tradition of the elders. The point Jesus was making is that the true gospel is going to wreck man-made traditions[20]

I think there is important truth in this perspective. Struggling to separate human tradition and cultural bias from the true message of Scripture has been an ongoing problem. For 2,000 years, there has been a constant need in the church to discern the difference between what God would have us take from Scripture and what we would have us take from Scripture. 

In our own nation’s history, the Bible was used to defend slavery as if it was God’s will as revealed in Scripture. Thankfully, there were always prophetic voices who said, “No. You are reading into the Bible what you want to find, not what God wants you to find.”

And thank God that the Holy Spirit illuminated Scripture to those in slavery such that they saw the truth not just of Jesus but of their humanity and worth in the pages of Scripture even when the preachers their masters forced them to listen to did not. [21]

Reading these parables as showing a clash between the powerful allure of human tradition and the challenging nature of divine Scripture rightly understood fits the context of the clash that had just occurred over Jesus’ calling of Matthew and feasting with sinners.

NEW (WINE)SKINS  = NEW (REVELATION)DISCIPLES

This brings me to the third and final perspective. The Jewish sages were known for referring to vessels for containing wine as people. The wine is the teaching that the individual consumes or contains. The parables would then look something like this[22]:

• New garment/wineskin = previously uneducated students

• Old garment/wineskin= previously educated students

• wine=teaching

Disciples who studied Torah in the various schools of the Pharisees would be inclined to disregard new teaching because they assumed they had been given a superior education. It makes me think of all the situations in life where it is so hard to undo what we have been taught through words and actions.  

• In basketball, it’s much easier to teach someone to shoot than it is to correct the form of someone who is already shooting.

• When AJ went to run track at Cornerstone. They undid all his previous coaching. He probably would have been better off not having run track before he got there.

• If you saturate yourself in a media bubble, it becomes increasingly hard to even conceive that you might not be right about an issue when you hear a different perspective.

• Depending on your family of origin, you know how hard it is to undo unhealthy, formative training in all kinds of areas.

• Even as Christians, we have been raised in churches that exist in communities, countries, traditions, denominations that absolutely form us in ways that undoubtedly get intermingled with traditions, some good and some bad. I know I have found that as I have learned how Christians around the world read and apply Scripture, it has been humbling to concede that I might not have been “rightly dividing the world of truth.”[23]

 This fits the context in which these parables are found, namely the call and selection of Jesus' disciples. He was choosing fishermen, tax collectors and "sinners" who had not been educated by the rabbis. (Only the very gifted went on to study beyond the age of 13; only the truly exceptional became disciples of the rabbis. The fact that Jesus was calling adults likely reveals they weren’t qualified or weren’t overly interested in following a rabbi.)

That criticism was that Jesus’ disciples were not at all like the disciples of John or the Pharisees. And Jesus says, “Correct. I need a different kind of disciple than the ones you have.”[24]  It takes a new kind of person to believe and embrace the reality of Jesus and His Kingdom. New garments, new wineskins and new students.[25]

This has come up several times in the first few chapters of the gospels. True change will only happen in our lives when we experience the miraculous salvation and transformation that only Jesus can bring.

• We will not work our way into salvation. (Ephesians 2:8)

• All of us fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

• We will not earn the right to be saved. (Romans 11:6) I don’t care who we are – we don’t deserve to be saved. (Romans 5:8)

• It is by grace we have been saved (Ephesians 2:8-9), and it is by grace that God remains faithful to us when we commit spiritual adultery. (2 Timothy 2:13)

• This gift is available to all. “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

“New” disciples are characterized by:

• Humility (about ourselves and our perspectives/traditions)

• Grace (paid forward from Jesus to everybody around us)

• Love (as the grace-motivated fulfilling of the Law)

• A generous invitation to the feast with Jesus

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[1] As a sign of contrition and penitence associated with prayer, fasting was a part of Old Testament piety from the time of the judges (Judg. 20:26; 1 Kin. 21:27), sometimes becoming an empty ritual (Is. 58:3). The Pharisees and their adherents apparently fasted twice a week (Luke 18:12).  ESV Reformation Study Bible

[2] In the OT, God the Father was the bridegroom (see Isa. 62:5; Hos. 2:19–20).  ESV Global Study Bible

[3] Fasting was often linked with mourning, whereas weddings were considered a time for rejoicing. Many rabbis taught that weddings took priority over many religious obligations. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[4] The story of Ruth and Boaz is a story about a Husband/Redeemer scenario.

[5] Isaiah said basically the same thing (Isa 54:5–6; 62:4–5. When God commanded Hosea to find his unfaithful wife and buy her back from slavery, he said, “Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods” (Hosea 3:1).

[6] James would later write that “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13) The apostle Paul would write, “Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! . . . And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (Romans 11:1–6, 11, 23).

[7] I got a lot of good information for that whole section from the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible.

[8] NIV First Century Study Bible

[9] New wine less than a year old was really popular (Nehemiah 10:39; Proverbs 3:10; Hosea 4:11; Haggai 1:11.  Luke records (Acts 2:13) that the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit led people to the conclusion that the disciples were “full of new wine.” (Ellicott’s Commentary)

[10] 10Do not abandon old friends, for new ones cannot equal them. A new friend is like new wine; when it has aged, you can drink it with pleasure.  (Sirach 9.10)

[11] Believer’s Bible Commentary

[12] Believer’s Bible Commentary

[13] Thru The Bible Commentary

[14] Orthodox Study Bible

[15] https://www.thomasnelsonbibles.com/blog/the-holy-spirit-in-the-old-testament/

[16] 2 Timothy 3:16-17

[17] https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/grace-in-the-old-testament

[18] Matthew 5:17

[19] An article at doctrine.org entitled “Paul and the Law” has some helpful explanations. https://doctrine.org/paul-and-the-law

[20] “Luke 5:39—What are the Old Wine and the New Wine Mentioned Here?” Mineko Hondahttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229750848.pdf

[21] I highly recommend African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation, by Lisa M. Bowens, as well as Stony The Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, by Cain Hope Felder.

[22] https://www.bethimmanuel.org/articles/new-wine-and-old-wineskins-parable-luke-536-39-re-examined

[23] I found the following books to be very insightful. None of them are perfect – there were question marks in the margins to match text I highlighted – but they jarred my thinking loose in some very important ways.

·      Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes,  and Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes, as well as The Cross and the Prodigal

·      Lois Tverberg, Walking In The Dust Of Rabbi Jesus

·      Scott McKnight, The Blue Parakeet

·      John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis 1

·      Esau McCauley, Reading While Black

·      Shane J. Woods’ series on Revelation

·      The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series

[24] In Acts 4:13 Luke writes, "Now as [the Sanhedrin] observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus."

[25] https://www.bethimmanuel.org/articles/new-wine-and-old-wineskins-parable-luke-536-39-re-examined

Rebuilding: A Parable

“Imagine yourself as a living house. 

God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? 

The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.  

He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

CHAPTER ONE: The Ruins

You live in a broken, run-down house. You’ve been here as long as you can remember. You know nothing else. For a while you were able to at least keep it looking nice on the outside, but it’s always been falling apart. 

You recently discovered that the foundation has massive cracks, with huge chunks falling out. In some places it looks like somebody just spray painted over some really sandy soil (Matthew 7:24-27) to look like concrete. You don't know much about foundations, but this seems like a problem.

The landlord seemed like a great guy at first (2 Corinthians 11:24). He allowed you to skip rent. He let you host all the parties you wanted – he even helped fund more than one. Sure, your friends trashed the place, but you trashed theirs, so it all seemed fair in a messed up kind of way. 

But you slowly realize that the landlord is a hard owner. You thought he was your friend. He isn’t. That rent you thought you skipped shows up in different fees, and when you think about the math you know the cost is more than you realized.

The landlord keeps promising that you will have a better house and a better life if you will just do one more thing: fix the roof, mend some pipes, hang new drywall, repaint, rebuild the foundation that keeps sinking further into the sandy soil. 

But all those things cost money that you don’t have, so you borrow money from the landlord at what you know is a ridiculous rate, but nobody else will loan you money. But even that growing debt can’t keep you ahead of the decay of this house. The only thing that ever pans out is pandemonium. 

You spackle over holes in the wall when you need a new wall; you wrap duct tape around leaking pipes when you need new pipes; you keep putting new vinyl tile on the floor to cover up the cracks when you need a new floor. Really (and deep inside you know it), you need a new house, because this house is doomed (Jeremiah 19:13).

It doesn’t help that you are really sick (Psalm 38). You feel as run down as your house looks. Maybe it’s the asbestos in the walls, and the ton of lead in all the paint, and what you are starting to think are purposefully leaky pipes in the gas stove. Maybe it’s the hint of sulfur that’s always in the air. 

Maybe it’s the snakes that keeping waiting outside the door to bite your feet (Genesis 3:15). Maybe it’s the parties that trash the whole property, or the foolish things you’ve done thinking they would make the house better when they just made everything worse.

Whatever the reasons, there’s something toxic about this house. It’s killing you. But as far as you know, this is all you have. This is the only place to live. All of your friends live in houses like this; the stories they tell about their landlord make it sound suspiciously like yours. You hate the person you have become in the house you’ve allowed to fall apart.

To make things worse, you realize one day that somebody is following you. Literally. He’s one step behind you everywhere you go. When you are finally able to catch a glimpse in a mirror, you realize… it’s you. 

Not just like you, but a zombie version. This other you looks like one of the Walking Dead. By the end of the day, he’s got a hand on your shoulder. The next morning, he drapes his arms around you and makes you carry him everywhere you go.

 He stinks. He’s dead weight. (Romans 7:24). You call your landlord hoping he can do something, but he already knew. “Yeah, they always show up in my houses.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s you. It’s just the real you. The dead you.”

“Why did it show up just now?”

“Oh, it’s always been there. You’ve been dead for years. You just couldn’t see it. ” 

There’s nothing you can do. The landlord doesn’t care. Most of your friends hang out somewhere else, and the ones that show up get really uncomfortable when you start to talk about it. You aren’t sure if it’s because they don’t see the dead you, or if they have their own haunting them. They just change the subject.

But they are your friends, so they try to help do things like paint the siding that is falling off the side of the house, and you continue to help them too. (Jeremiah 8:11)  It’s tough to paint while carrying death around.

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CHAPTER ONE ENDNOTES 

Among other horrible things that happened during Bible times, captive soldiers were sometimes forced to carry a dead body until the rot of the corpse killed them. The Roman poet Virgil wrote: “What tongue can such barbarities record or count the slaughters of his ruthless sword?
’Twas not enough the good, the guiltless bled,
Still worse, he bound the living to the dead:
These, limb to limb, and face to face, he joined;
O! monstrous crime, of unexampled kind!
Till choked with stench, the lingering wretches lay,
And, in the loathed embraces, died away!” About 100 years later, when Paul was looking for an analogy about how much he hated the part of him prone to sin, he wrote:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24)

Several commentators have noted that Paul was possibly referring to the same thing Virgil did.  

CHAPTER TWO: Bring Out Your Dead!

The next day a man walks onto the porch and crushes a snake twisting up from the steps. “Bring out your dead!” he calls out cheerily (John 11:25). 

You study him for a moment. “Don’t I know you? I do! You offered one time to fix my cabinets and, uh, I didn’t hire you. You’re Mary’s boy, right?” He nods amiably. “Why are you asking for dead? Haven’t you been helping your daddy build houses?”

“I have indeed been about my Father’s business,” he responds, “but there’s more than one kind of house, and more than one way to build them. Bottom line: I am here to help you with your housing situation.”

“What makes you think I need help with my house, and what makes you think there are dead here?”

“I could see it from the road. I can smell it on your breath; I hear it in your words (Romans 3:13); I see it in your eyes. Oh – and it clings to you like a monstrous burden. 

This house has killed you. Your landlord cracked the gas lines and installed the asbestos. Your landlord made sure there are no detectors for smoke or gas. He made sure you owe him so much money that you feel like he owns you. He loads this property up with snakes. 

Your landlord likes to get everything he can from his tenants before leaving them dead. But you were meant to be alive (John 5:21). And I can get rid of that body of death and make this house livable.”

This sounds great, but… “How can I trust you?” 

“Why do you think you even know that death is haunting you? You thought you were tired and sick. But that day you first saw yourself in the mirror, I was the one who showed you what was real. I was the one who opened your eyes. You needed to know (2 Timothy 2:26). You can trust me, because I bring you truth that will set you free (John 8:32).”

”I don't think you understand. It won’t be that easy. I drowning in my debt; I’m dying in my sickness. I’ve explored other options, but as best as I can tell, I’m doomed to live here until this house collapses or I do.     I’m a captive here.” 

He nods. “I do understand. I’ve been in this neighborhood for a while. I actually moved into the area to live with you and your friends. And I’ve got good news: I have a plan to pay for your debt, and I’ve got a pretty good track record of bringing beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3).”

“How will you do that?”

His smile is gentle, and grave. ”It will be…costly. But I will take captive the things that have captured you; I will pay your debt. I will take that load of death onto me so that you can be free from it. I am here to offer you freedom from your landlord and your dead self (Romans 5:6-21).”

“Why me? I’m nothing. Nobody. I’ve done nothing to deserve this.”

“Why not you? I care about you. I am here to seek and save people and situations that seem hopeless (Luke 19:10). Plus, I would actually like to move into this house (1 Corinthians 6:19), and where I am, there is no room for death and ruin (1 Corinthians 15:55).” 

“Where would I go if you move into this house?”

“Why would you want to go?”

You sit quietly for a long time. Your father always said you got what you deserved, and he never helped with your house or your health. Your landlord pretended to be your friend while guiding you down a road to death. Your friends had trashed your house, then had taken their dead selves to their dead parties on dead-end streets.

You look around at the shambles all around you. You remember the landlord’s harsh, condemning voice (Revelation 12:10). You feel the dead weight of your sins, failures and inadequacies on your back (Isaiah 43:24). 

You’ve never known anyone who seemed to care about you and your life. This man is kind (Romans 2:4). He’s generous (2 Corinthians 8:9). He offers a new start. He offers a new identity. Basically, He offers to make all things new (Revelations 21:5). 

Finally you whisper, “I have no future. I have no hope. Everyone offers me death. There is nowhere else to go. You are the only one who has ever offered me life (John 6:68). So…yes. Let’s do this. I and my house are yours.”

The Man stands up, lifts my dead self off my back, and places it onto his. “Well done. You have asked for resurrection, and I will give it. I will get the deed to your house, and when I return, I will show you what life is supposed to look like (Hebrews 2:14-18).”

You watch him until he is out of sight. It takes a while. He stops and knocks at every house. You wonder what he is going to do with all the dead he takes upon himself as he walks through the town. Then you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

When you awake at dawn three days later, you know everything has 

changed.

__________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER TWO ENDNOTES

Christ sets us free from that dead weight that’s been killing us. Why? Because He can, and he loves us.  We just need to ask. Then we are set free from that body of death. Here’s how Paul explains it in Romans 6 (beginning in verse 2).

"We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. When we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. So, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the wonderful power of the Father, we also can live a new life… We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves would have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin…

CHAPTER THREE: ReOrientation

You have a hard time believing the changes. No more debt. No more creditors knocking at your door – or at least, when they do, this man takes care of them. Now the rain stays outdoors and the plumbing stays in the pipes. Your front door actually latches. The floors seem to be some strange new normal –maybe that’s what people mean by level? It’s…amazing (2 Corinthians 5:17).

This Man – you’ve started calling him the ReBuilder - has a bigger plan than you realized. He isn’t going to just uncondemn the house and sweep up the garbage. He is planning to turn your shack into a mansion. When he first told you, you said, “Awesome! Go right ahead!” 

But the ReBuilder smiled and said, “Not without you. It’s our house. We work together. I’m going to completely remake the foundation(Matthew 7:24-27), and I am taking the lead on the rebuilding so you don’t work in vain (Psalm 127:1), but you need to give yourself to this project” (Romans 12:1).

The first thing you do is take an honest assessment of the mess that your house has become. You forgot how many rooms you had added, locked rooms haunted by the ghosts of the other Dead Yous that you didn’t even realize were there. 

The oldest one was the ghost of Abused You, sealed away, thinking it would stay behind that door but knowing (honestly) that it crept out all the time and hovered over every relationship you had. Then there was the room of the No Longer Innocent You, the room where love began to fade and shame began to grow; the room where Addicted You lost control.

Then there’s the room where Greedy You first learned to trample on others; the room where Angry You still punched holes in the wall and watched the fear grow in the eyes of others; the room of Mouthy You, where you first learned that words can manipulate, control, and wound – and you liked it.

It’s an embarrassing tour. The Rebuilder doesn’t seemed shocked. He keeps an arm around your shoulders as you walk; he lifts your chin up when your shame overwhelms you (Psalm 3:3). When you are done he says, “Has anyone ever killed a fatted calf for you?” (Luke 15:11-32)

“What? That’s…um, no. A fat calf? They once grilled a chicken – poorly, I might add, but they tried. Does a plump chicken and potato salad count?”

He smiles. “Not the same thing. It’s time to throw a celebration party for you.”

“What? This- (you point at the hallway with so many Dead You rooms – this deserves a celebration?”

“No, not that. But you were lost; now you are found (Luke 15:11-31). This deserves a celebration. Something barbecued or maybe even deep fried, and with an onion blossom of some sort. And we’re going shopping. The living do not wear the clothes of the dead (Romans 13:14). Maybe you’ll even get some snakeskin boots.”

You don’t argue. No one had ever celebrated you before. 

___________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER THREE ENDNOTES

Sanctification happens as the Holy Spirit works through Spirit-driven obedience as an act of worship.

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” (Romans 12:1)

But a living sacrifice wants to get off the altar sometimes. That old body of death is hanging around. 

“On the one hand, I serve the law of God in my mind; but on the other hand, the carnal side of me follows the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25)

This is an image for the process of sanctification. Initially, we are set apart (“made holy”) when we are justified by Christ. It changes our identity. We are no longer spiritually dead, enslaved to sin. Now we are alive and renewed. In an ongoing manner, the justified person who submits to God's will is becoming conformed to the image of Christ. Colossians 3:1-12 gives a great description of how the process takes place:

“Since you were raised from the dead with Christ, aim at what is in heaven, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Think about the things in heaven, not the things on earth. Your old sinful self has died, and your new life is kept with Christ in God.  Christ is your life, and when he comes again, you will share in his glory. 

So put all evil things out of your life: sexual sinning, doing evil, letting evil thoughts control you, wanting things that are evil, and greed. This is really serving a false god. These things make God angry. In your past, evil life you also did these things. But now also put these things out of your life: anger, bad temper, doing or saying things to hurt others, and using evil words when you talk. Do not lie to each other. You have left your old sinful life and the things you did before. You have begun to live the new life, in which you are being made new and are becoming like the One who made you. 

This new life brings you the true knowledge of God.  In the new life there is no difference between Greeks and Jews, those who are circumcised and those who are not circumcised, or people who are foreigners, or Scythians. There is no difference between slaves and free people. But Christ is in all believers, and Christ is all that is important.

God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So you should always clothe yourselves with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

See this tension? Though we are freely justified, fitting the mold of goodness doesn’t come naturally. God will continue to do a work in us through the Holy Spirit, but we invest sweat equity too. We see this tension other places in the Bible as well.

·      God works in us for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). 

·      God helps us bear good fruit (John 15:4).

·      God equips Christians to do his will (Hebrews13:21). 

At the same time the Bible also states:

·      We must work out their salvation (Philippians 2:12). 

·      We work to supplement our faith with virtue and good works (2Peter 1:5-7). 

·      We commit to abounding in the work of the Lord (1Corinthians 15:58).

CHAPTER Four: ReBuilding

As you work, the ReBuilder gives you all the tools you need – which is a good thing, because it turns our your tool set is part of the problem. He gives you his personally drawn blueprint, a fund to draw from for building materials, expert advice and help, etc. Since he’s the architect, designer, builder and inspector, He is available every day – leading, guiding, protecting, correcting (Romans 8:14).

But you have to set your alarm, get out of bed, put on the tool belt, pick up the lumber, swing a hammer, get splinters, and break and rebuild a few things. You are going to invest some sweat equity into this house (1 Corinthians 9:27).

Some days are better than others. You notice other houses in the neighborhood that are also being transformed by this ReBuilder. As you visit their project and they stop by yours, you build friendships as you listen to each other’s stories and admire the work of the Rebuilder. It is strange to be surrounded by…how would you describe this new feeling?... Hope. That’s it. Hope (Colossians 1:27). 

But you find it’s also easy to be jealous of other houses that look nicer – or to be proud as you compare yours to the ones the look less advanced. The ReBuilder picks up on this and just shakes his head. 

“Focus. Eyes on me. You and I are building your house (Philippians 2:12). You don’t know what kind of house they had before or where we are at in the rebuilding process. Let’s get your own house in order. I’ll worry about the others.”

You get hurt; you get tired; you misread the blueprint and put some walls at the wrong place and tear down others that should have been left alone; you shoot yourself with the nail gun more than once. You learn the importance of safety glasses and noise cancelling headphones, because it turns out guarding your eyes and ears is a thing that matters.

 You question the ReBuilder’s blueprint when it shows that he plans to remodel a part of your old house that you wanted to keep. You argue when He shows you something that is not up to code. He makes you move that foundation off the sand and onto a rock (Matthew 7:24-27), and that is some exhausting work. You never realized how much you had built on a poor foundation.

You occasionally find that your creepy old landlord has slithered off the sidewalk and is crouching outside your door (Genesis 4:7), wondering if he can hang out for a while. “Take a break,” he hisses. “Don’t take life so seriously.” Some days you actually invite him in and you hang out. 

It’s sometimes fun for a while (Hebrews 11:25), but it never ends well. You feel worn down again, almost as if your dead self was back, hand on your shoulder, whispering emptiness and loneliness into your ear. Your landlord always ends up roaring through your house, punching holes in the drywall, unfastening pipes, taking a jackhammer to the foundations - basically trying to demolish everything. (1 Peter 5:8)

But the Rebuilder helps you resist, and the old landlord has to leave (James 4:7). More than once the ReBuilder has picked that sneaky ghost of your Dead Self up by the collar and thrown him out on the street. You apologize to the ReBuilder when this happens.

He hugs you and reorients you. He doesn't yell (1 John 1:9). His forgiveness is just another one of the gift you don’t deserve (Ephesians 1:7). But that doesn’t mean you don’t spend days –even weeks - cleaning up the mess you created. 

You pick up all the stuff you can, and the Rebuilder gets the places you can’t reach and corrects the damage beyond your ability. He helps you make a plan to resist and avoid this situation the next time (Ephesians 4:27; 2 Corinthians 2:11). 

There are some days you wonder why the ReBuilder even puts up with you, but he never leaves you on your own. He remains true to his word. He holds you to the code but patiently helps you when you miss the mark. He teaches you how not to shoot anyone, including yourself, with the nail gun. 

You know you are in this together, that he is for you, that he will restore you and help you even when you are at your weakest (Psalm 51:10-12). So every day you rise and build, and you find increasing satisfaction in the affirmation of the ReBuilder and the pleasure of a job well done (Nehemiah 2:17-18; Matthew 25:23).

___________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER FOUR ENDNOTES

"We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. When we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. So, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the wonderful power of the Father, we also can live a new life… We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves would have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin... “ (Romans 6:2 and following)

Baptize meant to "put into" or "immerse" so that the thing baptized takes on the properties of the thing into which it was baptized. Garments were "baptized" in dye so that the garments took on the color of the dye. Cucumbers were “baptized” so that they became pickles. Christians absorb the righteousness that comes from Jesus’ death and resurrection. But part of devotion is making a choice about to whom you will offer yourself.

“Surely you know that when you give yourselves like slaves to obey someone, then you are really slaves of that person. The person you obey is your master. You can follow sin, which brings spiritual death, or you can obey God, which makes you right with him. In the past you were slaves to sin—sin controlled you. But thank God, you fully imitated the pattern of our teaching. You were made free from sin, and now you are slaves to goodness.” (Romans 6:16-18)

This “pattern of our teaching” refers to melted metal cast into a mold and conforming to the impression that is sunk or cut in the mold. They used to pour themselves into sin, and they conformed to its pattern. Now they are choosing to pour themselves into the truth about Christ, and they conformed to it. They looked like goodness. 

If we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him…You should see yourselves as being dead to the power of sin and alive with God through Christ Jesus. So, do not let sin control your life here on earth so that you do what your sinful self wants to do. Do not offer the parts of your body to serve sin, as things to be used in doing evil. Instead, offer yourselves to God as people who have died and now live. Offer the parts of your body to God to be used in doing good. Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law but under God’s grace.  (Romans 6:1-8; 11-14)

 “To live” in something was to be wholly given to it. An ancient writer, Aelian, wrote: “The Tapyrians are such lovers of wine, that they live in wine; and the principal part of their life is devoted to it.”  Not only do we soak up righteousness (which is a passive word of transformation), we can be wholeheartedly devoted (an active verb). 

CHAPTER FIVE: ReBuilt and Alive

It’s not all work. A lot of the time you just spend time with each other. He fishes with you on still waters. You shoot hoops at the YMCA and join friends at Buffalo Wild Wings for March Madness and go to Jonny Lang concerts. Being around him restores your soul (Psalm 23) even while your callouses thicken. You realize that you are absorbing his ideas, his language, his priorities, his way of living life abundantly (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Others join your circle. Some bring their dead; some have already been set free (Mark 2:13-17). Some still live in shacks; others are working with the ReBuilder on mansions. 

The Rebuilder welcomes them all. He didn’t come to condemn the dead to their bare, cold shacks. He came to save them and rebuild their lives (John 3:17). You invite even more to hang out with you (1 John 3:10). Some do; some don’t. You never stop inviting.

And slowly but surely, your house is becoming the kind of mansion that showcases the glorious power of the Rebuilder (Philippians 1:6). You find that you easily congratulate others whose houses are flourishing, and you compassionately help neighbors who are struggling. 

The blueprint makes more sense than it used to. You look forward to your alarm clock. The old landlord still comes around, but more than ever you see through his lies (John 8:44). Your Dead selves that once haunted you so closely stay on the sidewalk, and you notice their numbers have been dwindling. 

You notice a neighbor starting to work on his house by himself. He looks miserable. He is constantly having to redo things that don’t work; he has changed foundations twice, and that didn’t help his mood or his progress. He’s mentioned before that he had noticed the changes in your house, so you swing by occasionally to talk about his project. 

He’s not interested in your advice, so you help him bail water out of his flooded basement and bide your time.You take him some water one blistering day (Mark 9:41) and see that he finally has a blueprint. “Oh,” you say, “Did you meet the ReBuilder?” 

“No,” says your neighbor. “Why would he want to help with my house? It’s horrible. I found this fixer-upper idea from some well-known landlord online – he’s all over Twitter - and I added my own modifications. I think I can fix my house enough so the ReBuilder will notice. Once I make it good enough, I’ll be ready for him. When I meet him, I’d rather start with him being impressed than thinking I am some loser in need of help with everything.” He pauses. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I say. “But I have to tell you that this isn’t Field of Dreams.”

“My favorite movie!” he interjected.

“I figured. But this isn’t, ‘If you build it, he will come.’ It doesn't work that way. Stop trying to do it yourself (Isaiah 64:6). Unless the Rebuilder builds it and shares his tools, your labor is useless (Psalm 127:1). It’s making you angry and annoying your neighbors, and the next big storm is going to put you back at square one (Matthew 7:24-27).” 

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve got this. You’ll see.” He returns to his works. His Dead Self turns and smirks at you as you walk away and hands your neighbor some bottled water from Sulfur Springs, motto: “Thirst. Again.” (John 4:14)

You find that, the longer you work with the ReBuilder, more than a few note how you are continuing to become like Him (Ephesians 5:1). You are humbled and encouraged. Your friends used to comment on the eerie similarity between you and your former landlord (John 8:44; 1 John 3:10).This is much better. 

“But,” they say, “what’s with all the ongoing work? You told us this was a gift, but it’s starting to look like a life-long project.”

“Oh, it is, and it’s fantastic! Working side by side with the ReBuilder is part of the gift (1 Corinthians 1:9). I don't deserve to be his apprentice. Who am I to swing a hammer on this house? Who am I to cut expensive trim, and build a strong chimney? I brought nothing to this project, but he gives me everything I need to build great things (Colossians 3:1-12) on the foundation he has set.

“He has given me far above what I could ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). I just want to know Him and understand what kind of person gives grace to the failures and life to the dead (Philippians 3:10).  I just want to be near him and be like him and be part of the work he is doing in the world.

And in that process, all these things (here you wave your hand to show His house, His tools, the work of His hands, the campfire where He sat with his friends) have been added unto me” (Matthew 6:33). This, my friends, is what happens when obedience responds to grace. This is life (John 10:10; Romans 8:12-14).”

Harmony #14: Mercy and Sacrifice (Mark 2:1-17; Luke 5:17-32; Matthew 9:1-13)

Healing & Forgiving a Paralytic – (Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26; Matthew 9:1-8)
Now after some days, Jesus got into a boat and crossed to the other side and came to his own town. When he returned to Capernaum, the news spread that he was at home. 

 On one of those days, while he was teaching, there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting nearby (who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem), and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 

So many gathered that there was no longer any room, not even by the door, and Jesus preached the word to them. Some men came bringing to him a paralytic, carried on a stretcher by four of them. They were trying to bring him in and place him before Jesus.  

But when they were not able to bring him in because of the crowd, they removed the roof tiles above Jesus. Then, after tearing them out, they lowered the stretcher the paralytic was lying on, right in front of Jesus. 

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Have courage son[1], your sins are forgiven.”

Time out. This guy’s friends didn’t knock a hole in the roof for him to get his sins forgiven. He was there so this miracle worker could make him walk again. Yet Jesus offers the best miracle: the forgiveness of sins.[2]

Now some of the experts in the law and the Pharisees were sitting there, turning these things over in their minds: “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 

When Jesus saw their reaction, he immediately realized in his spirit that they were contemplating such hostile thoughts, he said to them, “Why are you raising objections within yourselves and thinking such evil things in your hearts?  Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your stretcher, and walk’? 

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”—he said to the paralytic— “I tell you, stand up, take your stretcher, and go home.”

I’ve noted this before, but it’s worth noting again: Physical miracles serve a greater purpose than simply the healing of the physical infirmity (though that’s also a gift of grace). Ultimately, forgiving sins is a greater act than a healing miracle (“Only God can forgive sins.”) The miracles are meant to reveal the power of God to do the greatest miracles of all in the realms we cannot see: the salvation and restoration of our hearts. Miracles confirm or affirm the Jesus is God, the Messiah, the long-awaited King and Redeemer.[3]

Immediately he stood up before them, picked up the stretcher he had been lying on, and went home in front of them all, glorifying God. Then astonishment seized them all, and they glorified God who had given such authority to men. They were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen incredible things today. We have never seen anything like this!”

No, they haven’t, but wait until they see what comes next. 

Notice their awe, though. It wasn’t that a man’s sins were forgiven. It was that he could walk again. And they glorified God “who had given such authority to men.” Glorifying God is good, but they still didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. And they seem far more fascinated by the potential to have physical diseases cured than to have their sins forgiven.

So Jesus is going to make the point really clear. He’s about to transform a man whose occupation made him a social pariah—a known sinner and an associate of publicly known sinners.[4]

Calling Matthew/Levi, Eating with Sinners (Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32; Matthew 9:9-13)
Jesus went out again by the sea. The whole crowd came to him, and he taught them.  As he went along, he saw Levi, or Matthew, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth. “Follow me,” he said to him. And he got up and followed him, leaving everything behind. 

Jewish people viewed tax collectors as traitors. When harvests were bad, it was not unheard of for the population of an entire village to leave town and start a village somewhere else when they heard that a tax collector was coming. Later rabbis sometimes contrasted Pharisees, as the godliest Judeans one would normally meet, with tax collectors, as the most ungodly one would normally meet.[5]

Then Levi gave a great banquet in his house for Jesus, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 

When the experts in the law and the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they complained to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 

When Jesus heard this he said, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

So Jesus said to Matthew/Levi – while he was sitting in his tax collecting booth – “Follow me.” And Matthew did. And then threw him a banquet and invited all of his sketchy friends.

THE BANQUET

Table fellowship was an important social and even religious event. Eating with someone established a covenant of friendship, which normally also signified approval.[6] Boundaries designated who was included and excluded and outlined religious and ethical obligations toward the participants.

Within Judaism, the Pharisees were well known for the role that table fellowship played in defining their group identities. They consumed food made sacred through various ritual practices such as ceremonial washings or tithing. Participants needed a prior initiation.[7]

In Judaism a scrupulous Pharisee would not eat at the home of a common Israelite (am ha’aretz, “people of the land”), since he could not be sure that the food was ceremonially clean or that it had been properly tithed. To avoid ceremonial defilement, a guest at the home of a Pharisee would be required to wear a ritually clean garment provided by the host.[8]

THE GUESTS

"Sinners" could have just been those who did not share all the observances of the Pharisees, but it seems to be prostitutes, tax collectors, and other people with publicly bad reputations. The term “sinner” (hamartōlos) was often used by the Pharisees to point to an identifiable segment of the people who were opposed to God’s will, but “sinner” is normally used more generally to designate the person who commits acts of sin defined by the law.[9]

The derision that many felt generally for tax collectors was aggravated because they were regarded as ceremonially unclean due to their contact with Gentiles and their compromise of the Sabbath.[10]

Though eating with them entailed dangers of ceremonial defilement, Jesus and his disciples did so. He became known as "a friend of tax collectors and `sinners" (Matthew 11:19).[11] In the minds of the Pharisees, for Jesus to share a meal with these types of persons indicated that he not only included them within his own fellowship, but also that he condoned their behavior.

But that’s in the mind of the Pharisees. Jesus will clarify what’s actually going on.[12]

THE PHARISEES’ BLIND SPOT

I don’t want to completely throw the Pharisees under the bus. They were trying. If Nicodemus is any indication, there were certainly Pharisees who were sincerely dedicated to pursuing the Kingdom of Heaven. As they understood it, getting all 600+ laws right and following all the details added by tradition were the key. But…they couldn’t see the forest for all the trees.

They had lost a key aspect of the heart of God for the world as expressed in Jesus: mercy.

THE PROVERBS JESUS QUOTES

“Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do.”

Jesus' quotes about the doctor connected his healing ministry with his "healing" of sinners. The physically sick need physical healing; the sinfully sick need the spiritual healing of mercy and forgiveness.

“I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”

This is a quote from Hos. 6:6.  In the context of Hosea, God’s people were keeping up on their sacrificial duties but living terrible lives.

• Mercy here means benevolence or kindness toward others.

• Sacrifices were offerings made to God on account of sin or as an expression of thanksgiving.They were always costly, usually crops or animals. You couldn’t offer a sacrifice without being reminded of what kind of penalty sin deserved.[13]

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice” is a Hebrew way of speaking in which an order of priorities was contrasted with really stark language (like saying you have to hate your family to love God).[14] It means:

"I am more pleased with acts of benevolence and kindness than with a mere external compliance with the duties of religion."

The sense in which Jesus applies it is this:

"You Pharisees are exceedingly tenacious of the "external" duties of religion; but God has declared that he prefers benevolence or mercy to those external duties.” [15]

There is a danger revealed in this story: even those most dedicated to religious observance will fail to see their own need for healing, and thus fail to understand the mercy God has shown them and expects them to pay forward.

The Pharisees were not only in need of the Great Physician, they were nowhere near as healthy as they thought. They had missed the importance of mercy. They didn’t understand how much they themselves still needed it. Jesus was doing more than telling them to be more sympathetic to outcasts; by quoting Hosea, Jesus was connecting them with the apostates of ancient Israel whose worship God rejected.[16]This us why Jesus challenged the Pharisees to "go and learn" what it means to live out what they claim to believe about what kind of people God calls his children to be.

They were baffled that someone demonstrated mercy and compassion to such blatantly obvious sinners while dismissing the "righteous" as hypocrites because they didn't understand that how showing mercy is more important than going through the motions of ritual worship. Your hands can be the most ceremonially clean hands in the history of the world while your heart is desperately unclean.

And what ‘furniture of the heart’ do the Gospel writers spotlight in this incident? The merciful heart of Jesus for sinners that motivates him to go to them. The Pharisees were concerned about righteousness (right living) and holiness (being separate as those called out by God), but they misunderstood what that meant.

Righteousness is not just withdrawal from; it’s active engagement to.

Righteousness is not just walking from sin; it’s walking to sinners.

Holiness isn’t meant to isolate us from the world; it’s meant to preserve us as we go in to the world.

The righteous should be known for modeling Jesus-inspired mercy to the despised, the unclean, the rejected. There is something about that posture that reflects the priority of the heart. Who is today’s tax collector? Who is the person or group of people you think so unclean, so unsavory, so wrong that the best thing to do is isolate them, avoid them, and paint them in the worst light possible when we talk about them? Who are the ones we think don’t deserve the dignity of being treated as image bearers of God?

The Pharisees were known for all the outward conformity that kept them clean through avoidance and distance. They were also known for their haughtiness, isolation, and hardness. They did not understand how God intended all the ceremonial rituals they loved to remind them of their sinfulness, their need, their inability to generate their own righteousness. They were supposed to see the deep and ongoing mercy of a God who continued to offer grace and forgiveness to them. Read Galatians 3. The Law was there to identify sin and constrain its impact. The Law was inspired behavior modification in a world that desperately needed it: it told God’s people what not to do and what to do. They were saved fromand to.

Simultaneously, there had to be a system for forgiveness of sins because nobody has the power to keep the law as God intends for it to be kept. Nobody. Unfortunately, the Jewish leaders thought the solution was to just keep adding details to the Law. And over time, keeping the Law became what we now call “virtue signaling”  - publicly displaying how their personal behavior and opinions deserved the praise of people while totally missing the heart of God for all the people they were throwing under the bus.

 These distortions of what God intended for the Law are tragic, because neither Hosea nor Jesus were saying God desired mercy and NOT sacrifice. The sacrificial system was put in place by God. The Law was from God. They were good things. It was just that if doing the rituals and sacrifices did not lead to a righteous heart of mercy that guided holy hands of mercy, the sacrifices were wasted.

 There are times when the prophets told the Israelites that their sacrifices were a stench in the nostrils of God because their hypocrisy was so bad. They thought going through the motions in the areas that impressed their community would appease God.

 Nope. He wasn’t a pagan God to be bribed, and he wasn’t impressed by the pious holiness that impressed people. He was a holy God to be worshipped with heart, soul, mind and strength.[i] Jesus quoted Hosea 6:6 to them. Here are some excerpts about what’s going on with God’s people from Hosea 5:

There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground… There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth. You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain… 

For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts… 

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. 

Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream… 

Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

 God is serious about religious hypocrisy. He doesn’t want us to go through the motions of worship to Him if they are not accompanied by merciful actions to others. Both are good; both are deeply intertwined.

And then notice… Did you see how tax collectors were called out in Hosea 5? And then Jesus quotes Hosea 6 to defend feasting with a tax collector whom he had just called to be a disciple? That, friends, is called “making a point.” The God who demanded justice on oppressive taxation demonstrates through Jesus that God extends mercy toward those on whom justice was going to roll over like a river.

Sacrifice without mercy is no acceptable sacrifice. To love sinners is a better fulfilling of the law than to stand aloof from them.[17]

So, let’s note what Jesus did and didn't do by eating with sinners and scandalizing the Pharisees.

He feasted with them without fraternizing in their sins. Interesting: Jesus was without honor in his hometown, but sat in a place of honor with the despised and unclean. He didn’t help Matthew collect unjust taxes; he didn’t enable whatever it was he and the other guests were doing. He wasn’t there to tell them their lives were just fine. But he did eat a meal of friendship. They were, after all, created in God’s image, and he was there not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.[18] All of Matthew’s sinner friends were introduced to Jesus’ mercy over a good meal.

He invested relational time without compromising His integrity. Jesus wasn't worried about being made impure by being around impure people, as if sin were spiritual Covid. Granted, we have to be more careful about how easily impressionable we are because we are not God in the Flesh. Wise boundaries matter. But there is a principal here” We are not called to withdraw and circle the wagons in the face of an impure culture full of impure people. We either believe God has the power to preserve and protect the sanctity of our souls when we are on mission, or we don’t. And if we do, then we should have the boldness and peace to be sitting around tables, building friendships, investing time with those both near and far from Christ.

He affirmed people’s value as people while calling them to repentance. It is possible to simultaneously validate the worth of people as people without that meaning we have somehow affirmed everything about that person. I have had so many friends who have affirmed me as a human being - and called me to repentance in areas of my life. They love me at my worst - and hold up a mirror (uuuggghhh). We do this all the time with our friends, our family, with each other inside the church. We know what this tension is like. Surely it is possible to do that with those outside the church.  Surely we are not called to be less Christ-like when people are far from Christ.

His message of mercy was effective with those who knew they needed it. I suspect he didn’t have to tell the sinners at the banquet about their sin. I’m pretty sure they knew their reputation. If they were Jewish people living in a Jewish community, they knew. Jesus was there not to condemn them – the Law had done that part already - but to demonstrate that ‘the world through him might be saved.’[19]  

No wonder Matthew was so excited that he threw a feast (with all his ill-gotten gain, I might add). He knew what kind of guy he was. Jesus didn’t need to tell him that he needed help. But who in his adult life had shown him this kind of mercy? Who had treated him like a human being with worth? What rabbi in history had called a tax collector actively collecting taxes to be a disciple? History is not destiny when Jesus is involved.

No wonder Matthew threw a feast and invited all his sketchy friends. People long to be known and loved, and that love is felt strongest when that which is known is the worst.

What has lingered with me this week is the kindness and mercy of Jesus to those who did not expect it. Paul – who also new something about the kindness and mercy of Jesus - wrote about it later:

Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

If we plan to call others to follow Jesus, I suspect this model ought to be formative in our plans. If God’s kindness, forbearance and patience is intended to lead people to repentance, our kindness, forbearance and patience should be on full display when we lift up Jesus to others.

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[1] “ In the N. T., pupils or disciples are called children of their teachers, because the latter by their instruction nourish the minds of their pupils and mold their characters.” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon)

[2]  “Jesus was illustrating an OT claim that human suffering rests in separation from God. Thus forgiveness is our deepest need.” Expositor’s Bible Commentary

[3] It’s also possible that Jesus was making a point that would have established his Messianic claims to his Jewish audience. “In the Talmud, we find a tradition that “a sick man does not recover from his sickness until all his sins are forgiven him, as it is written, ʻWho forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases” (Ps. 103:3).’ ” In another place, the rabbis appealed to Psalm 103:3–4 to explain why the prayer for forgiveness precedes the prayer for healing: “Redemption and healing come after forgiveness.” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament)

[4] Expositor’s Bible Commentary

[5]  NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

[6] NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

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

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

[9]  Luke 7:36–50; Matt. 26:45

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

[11] Expositor’s Bible Commentary

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

[13] Having something that could pay the penalty for them pointed to the great sacrifice or offering which Christ was to make for the sins of the world.

[14] Luke 14:26

[15] Barnes’ Notes On The Bible

[16] Expositor’s Bible Commentary

[17]  Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges

[18] John 3:17

[19] The Holy Spirit will do Holy Spirit work in people’s lives. Part of the mission of the Spirit is to convict the world of sin. See John 16:8.

* * * *

[i]Here are a couple other times in the Old Testament where the prophets beat the same drum about the foolishness of sacrifice when the heart and hands are compromised.

Jeremiah 6:20: “What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”

Isaiah 1:11–15: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.”

Harmony #13: The Galilee Miracles (4 Stories From Galilee)

As Christians, we are dualists – that is, we think there are two parts to reality in our universe: the natural and the supernatural. We are open to the supernatural as an explanation when things at times happen that are beyond our ability to explain scientifically or naturally. It could be that we don’t understand nature and the “laws” God gave it properly yet….but it could be that the explanation will require something supernatural. These are both live options for us dualists.

Those who do not believe in the supernatural here us say something like this cartoon shows (“Then a miracle occurs.”) They see it as a giving up too easily, or trying to find places for God to fit in a world where science makes God unnecessary.

As  Christians, miracles matter a lot to us. The heart of our faith is the Resurrection. That is the miracle that must have occurred in order for our faith to be valid. For a Resurrection you need an Incarnation – and that’s a miracle.  For the world in which the Incarnation occurs, you need a Creation – and that’s a miracle.  For the new life the Christ offers to all of us – we need a miracle. It’s not just the life of Jesus or what’s recorded in the book of Acts. This has been part of church history for over 2,000 years.

• Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch speak of the miracles

• Origen:  exorcisms, healings, and fulfilled prophecy

• Irenaeus: magic-workers of his day "cannot give sight to the blind nor hearing to the deaf, nor put to flight demons; and they are so far from raising the dead as Our Lord did, and the Apostles, by prayer, and as is frequently done among the brethren, that they even think it impossible."

• Justin Martyr:  his speech to the Roman Senate appealed to miracles done publicly in Rome.

• Tertullian: challenged the local magistrates to work the miracles which the Christians perform.

• Augustine:  wrote a long list of miracles he saw, with names and details, described them as well known, and said they happened within the previous two years.

• Gregory the Great:  told Augustine of Canterbury not to be elated by the many miracles God was doing through him for the conversion of the people of Britain.

• Craig Keener (who we will mention later) has a fantastic two volume set on verified modern miracles.

Unfortunately, we use “miracle” in so many different ways that we can become confused concerning what we are actually talking about.  We talk about the miracle of birth and miracle finishes for sports matches; I use Miracle Grow for my garden. When roundabouts get done 10 weeks early we say, “It’s a miracle!”

Here’s our definition that reflects the biblical view: “A supernatural interaction with the natural world in which an event that would not have otherwise occurred does occur.” Now that we have a definition, let’s look today at three main objections before we move into the stories.

Objection #1: Miracles are so unique, so unusual, so improbable, it is more probable that the testimony against ‘uniform experience’ is false than that the event is true. (#David Hume) It is more likely that the witnesses lied than that the uniform laws of nature were broken. However, uniform experiences (‘laws’) are like an “average”; they tell us a lot about life in general, but not necessarily about life in detail. Here are some actual modern events recorded in Craig Keener’s book:

• Keener tells of of “a young woman on her deathbed, almost completely paralyzed from multiple sclerosis. She heard Jesus’ voice calling her to rise and walk, and she was instantly healed so thoroughly that she didn’t even have to contend with atrophied muscles. All three of her doctors have confirmed the account in writing, laying their own reputations on the line. She lived for 40 more years with no recurrence.”[1]

• Another story he documents is of a woman blind for 12 years, instantly healed during prayer, a fully documented case now written up in a medical journal.

The laws of nature (dead people don’t come back to life; there is no medical cure for MS or blindness) are called laws not because they are actual laws, but because they are so overwhelmingly common that we know what’s going to happen in the ordinary course of human events (people who die stay dead; people who are blind or have MS will always have these things).

However, we reached that conclusion based on observation. If observation were to reveal that there are instances where the dead do, in fact, come back to life, then the ‘law’ needs a new definition, something like this: “Barring supernatural intervention, the dead do not come back to life in the natural course of events.”[2]

C.S. Lewis noted this with Hume’s argument. Not only is experience not his friend, but also there is something illogical in Hume’s argument:

“If there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, in other words, they have never happened, why then, they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false.  And we know all the reports are false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred.  In fact, we are arguing in a circle.”  C.S. Lewis

Objections to Miracles #2: Natural explanations can be provided for most miraculous claims. If not, it’s just because we don’t understand the world well enough yet (i.e., quantum physics).

Say a person is medically documented to have been healed of blindness. I and the person objecting to miracles are both filling in a gap. We both agree the event lacks a known natural explanation; we both are offering a way to fill in that gap with a plausible scenario. Because I believe in God as portrayed in the Bible, I think there are two possible explanations, neither of which should be dismissed out of hand. Miracles are on the table. Tim McGrew[3]gives a great response to the idea that miracles should be dismissed out of hand:

“Deep in the heart of a great forest, a bird who has never seen a human being lives in contentment at the top of a large and flourishing tree. One day he flies miles to the north and spends a day eating grubs in a marsh. The day is clear and fine, with scarcely a cloud. 

 When the bird returns in the evening, the tree where he has lived lies flat upon the ground, neatly severed at the base. Our bird knows that trees with dead branches sometimes snap and fall in the wind or even collapse under their own weight. He knows that severe storms can split or knock down even an apparently healthy tree. 

 But in his experience, without exception, healthy trees do not suddenly fall on sunny days. Yet there the tree lies. What is the bird to think, and what should his skeptical friends think of his testimony that the tree did, indeed, fall? In all of the bird’s experience up until now, man has never played a role.  

But now his world has been invaded by a higher order of being that can make things happen the bird has never experienced or imagined. The generalization he has formed — that healthy trees, left to themselves, do not fall down on sunny days — is true as far as it goes. But this tree was not left to itself.”

I asked a skeptical friend once what it would take to believe miracles. It became clear NOTHING would convince him. No matter how much scientific evidence I suggested or how many eyewitnesses I could produce, he said he would always believe that we just didn’t understand something about the natural world.  No matter what, we have been left to ourselves.

If no natural criteria can explain an event, it’s at least worth considering that a supernatural explanation - something (or someone) - has interacted with our world. We have not been left to ourselves.

Objections to Miracles #3:  Miracles  make the efforts of science useless, because science relies on a predictable, cause/effect universe.

I’ve heard an analogy comparing God’s miraculous intervention in the world to the way events are influenced inside a fishbowl. If someone bumps the fishbowl, the pebbles will shake and the water will ripple.  If the fish are committed to seeking an explanation only inside the fishbowl, they will never find an adequate explanation for what happened. Maybe they think believing otherwise allows for a “God” who violates the laws of the nature in the fishbowl.

We, however, know that if the fishbowl hadn’t been reacted to the bump, laws governing a reality much bigger than just the fishbowl would have broken.  In other words, an orderly and predictable world still demonstrates ‘cause and effect’ when miracles occur.  Had the fishbowl not responded, that would actually be the problem. I like C.S. Lewis’s response from his book Miracles: 

“Miracles, if they occur, must, like all events, be revelations of that total harmony of all that exists... In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her [Nature] own resources, she could never produce them… there are rules behind the rules, and a unity which is deeper than uniformity."

I put this foundation in place because the next four stories in the life of Jesus involve miracles (and we’ve already seen the water turned into wine). If we plan to take the Bible seriously, we must take the reality of miracles of seriously. Miracles are foundational to the story line over and over. There are implications for us today (more on this at the end).

I’m putting these four together because as a group they tell us something important about Jesus, as well was as how God works in the world.

Healing the Royal Official’s Son – Cana, Galilee (Jn 4:46-54)
 Now Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water wine. In Capernaum there was a certain royal official, an officer in Herod’s service, whose son was sick. When he heard that Jesus had come back from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die.

So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people in Galilee see signs and wonders you will never believe!”[4] “Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my child dies.” Jesus told him, “Go home; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him,[5] and set off for home. While he was on his way down, his slaves met him and told him that his son was going to live.

So he asked them the time when his condition began to improve, and they told him, “Yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon the fever left him.”  Then the father realized that it was the very time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he himself believed along with his entire household.

Jesus did this as his second miraculous sign[6] when he returned from Judea to Galilee.

Calling Four Disciples - Sea of Galilee (Mt 4:18-22; Mk 1:16-20; Lk 5:1b-11)
As Jesus was walking along the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon (called Peter) and Andrew his brother,[7]casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen).

He saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

Simon answered, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets started to tear. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they were about to sink.

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For Peter and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s business partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people. Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” So when they had brought their boats to shore, they immediately left everything and followed him.

Going on from there Jesus saw the two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. Then he called them.[8] They immediately left the boat and their father and followed him.

Casting Out an Unclean Spirit – Capernaum, Galilee (Mk 1:21-28; Lk 4:31-37)
Lk 4:31 Then Jesus and his disciples went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee. When the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people there were amazed by his teaching, because he taught them like one who had authority, not like the experts in the law.

Now in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon,[9] and he cried out, “Ha! Leave us alone, Jesus the Nazarene! Have you come to destroy us?[10] I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”  But Jesus rebuked him: “Silence! Come out of him!” After throwing him into convulsions in their midst, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him, without hurting him.[11]

They were all amazed so that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority and power![12] He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him and come out!” So the news about him spread quickly throughout all the region around Galilee.

Healing at Simon Peter’s House – Capernaum, Galilee (Mk 1:29-34; Lk 4:38-41; Mt 8:14-17)
Now as soon as they left the synagogue, they entered Simon Peter and Andrew’s house, with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law was lying down, sick with a high fever, so they spoke to Jesus at once about her and asked him to help her.

Standing over her, Jesus rebuked the fever, raised her up by gently taking her hand, and the fever left her.[13]Immediately she got up and began to serve them. When it was evening, as the sun was setting,  the whole town gathered by the door.  Those who had any relatives sick with various diseases or demon-possessed brought them to Jesus.

He placed his hands on every one of them and healed them, and drove out the spirits with a word. Demons came out of many, crying out, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them, and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.

In this way what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet was fulfilled, “He took our weaknesses and carried our diseases.”

* * * *  

Through these miracles, Jesus demonstrates his power:

• over death

• over nature

• over evil spirits

• over sickness

All of this to make clear that He is the prophesied Messiah. There is nothing left over which to demonstrate power. He has covered both the seen and unseen world. There is nothing that has been left alone. He also defies being placed neatly in a formula box when he intervenes miraculously in people’s lives:

• Showed power over death to a wealthy despised Gentile[14] who asked for a miracle.

• Showed power over nature to ordinary, believing Jewish laborers (the disciples) who didn’t ask for a miracle.

• Showed power over evil spirits to a demon-possessed man (in a synagogue, no less) who actively tried to push Jesus away.

• Showed power over sickness to an honored woman on whose behalf others asked for a miracle

If I look at these 4 stories and ask myself, “What does it take for someone to experience a miraculous intervention in their life?” the answer is, “Jesus.” He was demonstrating that the Kingdom of God had been inaugurated in Jesus.

I believe God still works miracles today. Many of you have experienced it in your own life. At minimum, it’s the miracle of the new birth and the process of Holy Spirit sanctification. Things have happened in us that could not have happened just in the course of the natural world unfolding. God has not left us alone.

Perhaps you have seen more than that. Perhaps it has been something you could see with your eyes that happened in the ‘seen’ parts of the world, events that demonstrated God’s power and reminded you that God can do miracles in the unseen parts of the world (emotional, mental and spiritual healing of soul and spirit). Even if you haven’t seen those, the Bible records Jesus’ miracles of the seen that demonstrate his power in the unseen, and that alone is a faithful and sufficient witness.[15]

This morning, I want to encourage us to pray for the supernatural intervention of God in our lives and in the world.

• Pray for the war in Ukraine to end.

• Pray for salvation and righteousness for the leaders in our nation.

• Pray for those you know who are far from Christ.

• Pray for your family and friends in all kinds of need.

• Pray for the work of the Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit.

• Pray holiness and righteousness to rise.

• Pray for wisdom, patience, peace, joy, love, hope…

• Pray for….

And when we experience in ourselves that supernatural work of God, or when we see or hear of the power of God’s presence at work in others around us, may it remind us that we have not been left alone. The King of the universe is near.

Recommended Resources:

Miracles.  C.S. Lewis.

Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Craig Keener.

“Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational? “John Lennox at Harvard

“A Defense of the Rationality of Miracles,” Brett Kunkl

MBA Episode 64: Explaining Miracles To Kids with Matthew Mittelberg (Hillary Morgan Ferrer, Mama Bear Apologetics)

“Miracles Are Outlasting the Arguments Against Them.” Craig Keener, in an interview at Christianity Today

Miracles in Church History, by William Young. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/churchman/102-02_102.pdf

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[1] Craig Keener, interviewed at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-web-only/craig-keener-miracles-today-supernatural-god.html

[2] Irenaeus, (late 100s) wrote, “As I said. even the dead have been raised and remained with us for considerable years… Nor does the Church do anything by angelic invocations, nor incantations, nor other perverse meddling. It directs prayers in a manner clear, pure, and open, to the Lord who made all things, and calls upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/churchman/102-02_102.pdf

[3] Christian philosopher at Western Michigan University

[4] “In general, we find that the Lord Jesus was not as pleased with a faith that was based on miracles as He was with that which was based on His Word alone. It is more honoring to Him to believe a thing simply because He said it than because He gives some visible proof.” (Believer’s Bible Commentary)

[5] “Long-distance miracles were rare by Old Testament, other Jewish, and Greco-Roman standards; people generally believed prophets and Greek magicians more easily if they were present in person. The rare stories of long-distance miracles suggested to ancient readers that these miracle workers had extraordinary power.” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament)

[6] John will record 7 signs.

[7] Andrew and Simon Peter had earlier left John the Baptist to follow Jesus (Jn 1:35-51). This account, appears to be the formal calling of these men… “This is actually the second time Jesus called Peter and Andrew. In John 1:35–42 they were called to salvation; here they are called to service.” (Believer’s Bible Commentary) 

[8] “The normal pattern in Israel was for a prospective disciple to approach a rabbi and ask to study with him. Perahyah said, “Provide thyself with a teacher and get thee a fellow disciple,” which Rabban Gamaliel echoed, “Provide thyself with a teacher and remove thyself from doubt.” At the inauguration of his kingdom mission Jesus establishes a new pattern, because he is the one who takes the initiative to seek out and give a call.” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament)

[9] “Judea, in our Lord's time, abounded with demoniacs. First, [the people] were then advanced to the very height of impiety. See what Josephus, their own historian, says of them: There was not (said he) a nation under heaven more wicked than they were. Secondly, Because they were then strongly addicted to magic, and so, as it were, invited evil spirits to be familiar with them.” (Adam Clarke commentary)

[10] “Only God could destroy demons. In Jewish tradition God’s inbreaking reign meant the destruction of Satan and his minions.” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[11] Justin Martyr, in the mid 100s, wrote to the Roman rulers: “You may learn from what goes on under your own eyes. For many devil-possessed all over the world, and in your own city, many of our men, the Christians, have exorcised in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. When all other exorcists and sayers of charms and sellers of drugs failed, they have healed them, and still do heal, sapping the power of the demons who hold men, and driving them out.” https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/churchman/102-02_102.pdf

[12] Jesus’ authority over impure spirits characterizes his ministry (vv. 32, 34, 39; 3:11, 22; 5:1–20; 7:24–30; 9:14–27; cf. 3:15; 6:7, 13; see note on v. 24) and here reinforces the authority of his new teaching. It demonstrates that he has already bound Satan (3:27) and is “the one more powerful” whose coming John proclaimed (v. 7).” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[13] “Just as Jesus “rebuked” the demon (see 4:35; cf. also 4:41), so now he “rebukes” (epitimaō) the fever. This does not mean that the fever is a demonic presence. Though illness was often associated with spiritual oppression in the ancient world and is sometimes so linked in Luke’s Gospel (8:29; 9:39; 11:14; 13:11), elsewhere in Luke Jesus’ healings are distinguished from his exorcisms (see 4:40–41; 7:21; 13:32).” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament)

[14] The commentaries I read believe this man lived among the Jewish people but was not Jewish.

[15] “The most dramatic miracles happen most often (though not by any means exclusively) on the cutting edge of evangelizing unevangelized areas, a setting similar to the one in the Gospels and Acts. They also happen where they are most needed—not to entertain us, not to get us to neglect other resources God has provided, but because of the Lord’s compassion for our need.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-web-only/craig-keener-miracles-today-supernatural-god.html

Harmony #12: The Year Of The Lord’s Favor - Part 2 (Luke 4:16-30; Matthew 13:53-58; Mark 6:1-6)

 Now Jesus, with his disciples following him, came to Nazareth, his hometown where he had been brought up. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom, and began to teach the people. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release (redemption) to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[1] 

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then Jesus began to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.”[2] 

Points from last Sunday:

(a) It is possible that really godly people are right in front of us and we don’t see it. (“Surely, God is in this place and I did not know it”.)

(b) The response of wonder at Jesus’ teachings and works was coupled with persistent unbelief and rejection. (Wonder isn’t the same as worship. People can be amazed by Jesus and far from God.)

(c) God has concern for the poor and oppressed of all kinds. (Physical care and spiritual care go hand in hand. #both/and)

(d) Without the freedom Jesus brings, freedoms turn into either indulgence or oppression. (In Christ, we are freed from sin and to righteousness. Our freedom is holy – set aside for God’s purposes.)

This brings us to the 5th and final observation.

It is significant that Jesus stopped reading with the words “ … to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He did not add the rest of the words from the passage in Isaiah: “and the day of vengeance of our God.”

Eventually, when John the Baptist goes to jail, his disciples will ask Jesus if he actually is the one they are looking for, or if they should look for someone else.[3] This was after JTB had clearly identified Jesus as the promised Messiah already, confirmed with a supernatural confirmation at Jesus’ baptism, let alone all the miracles he surely knew about.

I wonder if they were counting on the day of vengeance. Where was the promised physical freedom, the judgment on the oppressors? Do you remember how the Jewish crowds will eventually choose Barabbas over Jesus? They wanted the Zealot in their midst, someone who had a violent agenda to overthrow Roman oppression.

In a very practical sense, when was John going to get out of jail?  Was there going to be two Messiahs, maybe, a good cop/bad cop team? Why isn’t fire falling from heaven? (Something Jesus’ disciples will request later – and be denied).[4] Here’s what happened in response:

“At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (Luke 7:21-23)

In other words, they saw him fulfill Isaiah’s prophecies concerning the Messiah. Why on earth would anyone stumble over this? I suspect it was because the point of his Incarnation was not to bring practical vengeance on Roman oppressors or the final Day of Judgment that John records at the end of Revelation. Jesus came to proclaim that the year of the Lord’s favor had arrived thanks to Jesus coming to earth to fulfill His mission of salvation.

I want to anticipate a response before we move on. This declaration does not mean Jesus’ death and resurrection did away with the need for justice to address sin and evil. John will record Jesus also saying this:

“For judgment[5] (from krino: distinguish; separate; render a verdict) I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.” (John 9:39)

So how do we balance “for judgment I have come into the world” with, “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it, but to save it”? (also recorded by John in chapter 3 of his gospel). Well, John helps us in his own text:

“And this is the judgment (same root word): the light is come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.” (John 3:19)

It is inevitable: when light is introduced, it separates light from darkness. This is a principle as old as Genesis 1.

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

The light was a blessing; but the light is not the darkness (obviously), and the introduction of light makes clear the different nature of light and dark. As it is physically in the Old Testament, so it is spiritually in the new. A new kind of light is introduced, and it clarifies the chasm between spiritual light and spiritual darkness. Those who love the darkness will face judgment not because Jesus forced it on them, but because they have chosen the darkness. Here’s a good explanation for the judgment question from Ellicott’s Commentary:[6]

“The special form of the word rendered “judgment” in this place is used nowhere else by St. John, and indicates that…His coming was a bringing light into the darkness of men’s hearts, a testing of the false and the true, and as people accepted or rejected Him they pronounced a judicial sentence upon themselves. That light judged no one, and yet by it everyone was judged.” (Ellicott’s Commentary For English Readers)[7]

The purpose of His First Coming was to announce that the acceptable year of the Lord, or the year of the Lord’s favor, had arrived. Over and over in his ministry, Jesus pointed toward the goodness of life in the Kingdom of God.  In just the first few recorded incidents in his public ministry, we see three key components put into place:

• He explained the path to Kingdom citizenship (be born again).

• He described the worship (in spirit and truth).

• He described the outcome (“proclaim good news to the poor, redemption to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor.”)

God revealed His plan for bestowing favor through the Incarnation of Jesus, who came to proclaim the grace and mercy of the gospel, the Good News of forgiveness and hope. God, through Jesus, has taken upon Himself the eternal judgment people deserve, and offers LIFE in a glorious, heavenly kingdom that begins now and moves into eternity.[8]

John the Baptist’s message was, “Repent and flee from the wrath to come.”[9] The reality of condemnation paves the way for the message of reconciliation. That groundwork had been laid. In Jesus’ first three encounters with people after the cleansing of the temple, he focused on the life that God offers.

The life is characterized by freedom from the power and condemnation of sin and freedom toflourish in our heart, soul, mind and strength, which will inevitably be expressed in working to help others flourish in the same way.

And if that’s the focus of Jesus, I think it’s safe to assume that our focus, as the people of Jesus, should be the same. We, as God’s ambassadors, have been empowered by God to carry on the message of Jesus.   

• We too, proclaim that Jesus has the power to bring freedom to those bound in oppression of all kinds;

• We, too, proclaim that Jesus has the power to bring healing to the spiritually sick, sight to the spiritually blind, mobility to the spiritually lame, and he has shown us this by bringing physical healing to prove He has the power to do in the realm of the unseen what he can do in the world of the seen;

• We, too, are ‘broken and spilled out’ for the suffering and needy both spiritually and physically, demonstrating the heart of the Great Physician who brings hope and healing to bodies and souls.

I wonder if people experience us as people joyfully proclaiming that this time period in which we live has been shown favor through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  How much time do we spend pointing with excitement toward what God offers to the world through Jesus to those inside and outside the Kingdom of God? How often do we simply proclaim (and demonstrate) the beauty of life in the Kingdom to those both near and far from Christ? In other words, are we known for majoring for what we have been freed to?

I was raised in a church environment that focused more on John the Baptist’s message of fleeing the wrath to come than on loving Jesus and being captivated by what life in His Kingdom looks like. I constantly avoided hell instead of embracing heaven. I fled from the wrath to come at every revival meeting, but that almost never included running toward a glorious, risen Savior who offered me life abundant. I was more excited about skipping hell than I was experiencing heaven. I was more focused on avoiding Satan than pursuing Jesus.

Once again, we don’t ignore that the wages of sin is death, and bringing that point home can include helping the spiritually sick see their sickness and thus their need for the Doctor. But surely we are meant to major on the major point: the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. [10]

If we get so busy looking behind us to flee what’s nipping at our heels, we will lose our way because we have lost our focus. We have to see where we are going, and who we are following. We fix our eyes on the prize of the high calling we have in Christ Jesus.[11] We follow Jesus because we have been captivated by the person and promise of Jesus.  

As I look back over my meager 53 years, I think I spent far too much time looking behind me to avoid being singed by the fire (and frankly, trying to figure out how close I could get without getting burned.) When all that motivates you is avoiding punishment, you’re going to see how much you can get away with. How much sin can I do and still avoid hell?

Jesus didn’t come so I could flirt with sin effectively and get away with as much as I could. He came to give me an abundant, holy life in which I live in God’s design and favor. 

And when we - the oppressed, the captive, the blind, the hungry, the sick for whom Jesus died, and to whom He offers the good news of a salvation, redemption, healing and freedom – when we proclaim and live that message…. Well, I’ll let Isaiah remind us of what happens.

• “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing appear;

• your righteousness will go before you…

• you will call, and the Lord will answer…

• your light will rise in the darkness…”

• your descendants will be known among the nations

• all who see will acknowledge that you are a people the Lord has blessed.

We rightly pray for revival in our town and in our land. We are in desperate need of it. It sure seems like it begins with us being rightly revived. It’s then that God’s people reflect the light of Jesus brilliantly and powerfully into a world smothered in darkness.

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[1] The year of the Lord’s favor (Grk “the acceptable year of the Lord”) is a description of the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25:10). The year of the total forgiveness of debt is now turned into a metaphor for salvation. (NET Bible Commentary) Jesus reads Isa 61:1 – 2, with an added line from Isa 58:6 (tradition suggests that synagogue readers were allowed to “skip” material when reading the Prophets). Isa 61:1 – 2 probably evokes the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25), in which all slaves were to be released. Although Jesus’ reading ends with salvation, his audience would know that the passage goes on to announce also judgment. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[2] Regaining of sight may well mean more than simply miraculously restoring physical sight, which itself pictures a deeper reality (Luke 1:77-79; 18:35-43). Oppressed may well mean more than simply political or economic oppression, but a deeper reality of oppression by sin (Luke 1:77-79; 18:35-43). The essence of Jesus’ messianic work is expressed in the phrase to set free. This line from Isa 58 says that Jesus will do what the nation had failed to do. It makes the proclamation messianic, not merely prophetic, because Jesus doesn’t just proclaim the message—he brings the deliverance. “ (NET Bible Commentary)

[3] Luke 7

[4] Luke 9

[5] “The precise form of word for ‘judgment’ occurs nowhere else in this Gospel. It signifies not the actof judging (John 5:22; John 5:24; John 5:27; John 5:30) but its result, a ‘sentence’ or ‘decision’ (Matthew 7:2, Mark 12:40, Romans 2:2-3, &c.), Christ came not to judge, but to save (John 3:17, John 8:15); but judgment was the inevitable result of His coming, for those who rejected Him passed sentence on themselves (John 3:19). See on John 1:9 and John 18:37.” (Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges)

[6] We can feel a similar tension on the issue of peace. Over and over, we read about the peace that Jesus brings; specifically, “Peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.” “He is our peace”; “Peace I give and leave with you.” Jesus brought peace. How do we reconcile this with his  statement in Matthew 10:34: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."? The answer, I believe, is that Jesus is simply observing that not all will accept that Jesus is who He claimed, and disagreement over this issue will lead to conflict. See 2,000 years of history for how that dynamic has unfolded.

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

“As those are most blind who will not see, so their blindness is most dangerous who fancy they do see. No patients are managed with so much difficulty as those who are in a phrensy, who say they are well, and that nothing ails them. The sin of those that are self-confident remains; for they reject the gospel of grace, and therefore the guilt of their sin remains uncancelled; and they grieve and quench the Spirit of grace, and therefore the power of their sin remains unbroken. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? Hearest thou the Pharisee say, We see? There is more hope of a fool, of a publican, and a harlot, than of such.” (Benson Commentary) 

“Nothing fortifies men's corrupt hearts against the convictions of the word, more than the high opinion which others have of them; as if all that gained applause with men, must obtain acceptance with God. Christ silenced them. But the sin of the self-conceited and self-confident remains; they reject the gospel of grace, therefore the guilt of their sin remains unpardoned, and the power of their sin remains unbroken.” (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary)

[8] John 10:10

[9] Matthew 3

[10] Romans 6:23

[11] Philippians 3:14

Harmony #11: The Year Of The Lord’s Favor (Luke 4:16-30; Matthew 13:53-58; Mark 6:1-6)

In today’s passage, Jesus is going to read from the Old Testament, then apply it in such a way that his hometown tries to kill him. To better understand what’s happening, we need to know the passages to which he was referring. (And like Jesus does in His reading, I am going to excerpt the parts that make my point J) 

Isaiah 42 

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; 4 he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope. 6 “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, 7 to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

ISAIAH 58

“Declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.2 For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,‘ and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’“ Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. 4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. 9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Isaiah 61 

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,  and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…6 And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God…9 Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.”

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary has a nice summary of the ‘acceptable year of the Lord’ or ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’:

“An allusion to the jubilee year (Leviticus 25:10), a year of universal release for person and property. As the maladies under which humanity groans are here set forth under the names of poverty, broken-heartedness, bondage, blindness, bruisedness… so, as the glorious Healer of all these maladies, Christ announces Himself in the act of reading it.”

 Jesus’ audience understood the implication for them if the year of the Lord’s favor had arrived. Not only would all the wrongs they had experienced as a people be made right, but their personal lives would be characterized by blessing. 

Also, it clear that when God’s people were characterized by justice and righteousness during this time of favor, God planned to use them mightily. It wasn’t just the individuals helped; it was the witness to the goodness of the God whose people were doing this work. But…. when they didn’t do this – when they failed to honor God’s priorities even while being really pleased with themselves – well, God was going to get His people’s attention. 

* * * * *

Welcomed in Galilee (Jn 4:43-45; Lk 4:14-15; Mk 1:14b)
After the two days Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, departed from there to Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God. So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen all the things he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival (for they themselves had gone to the feast). News about Jesus spread throughout the surrounding countryside, and he began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by all. 

Rejected in Nazareth (Lk 4:16-30; Mt 13:53-58; Mk 6:1-6)
Now Jesus, with his disciples following him, came to Nazareth, his hometown where he had been brought up. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day,[1] as was his custom, and began to teach the people. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release (redemption) to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind,[2] to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[3] 

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then Jesus began to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled[4] even as you heard it being read.”[5]

 Time out. These passages, in their fullness, are hopeful passages to Jesus’ audience. Remember all the blessings, the ways God planned to use his just and righteous people? Fantastic! The audience must be psyched that Jesus applied this passage to them. Perhaps that’s way… 

All were speaking well of him, and were amazed at the gracious words coming out of his mouth. They said, “Where did he get all these ideas? And what is this wisdom that has been given to him? What are these miracles that are done through his hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and Joseph, and brother of James, Joses (Joseph), Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us? Where did he get all this?”

Jesus said to them, “No doubt you will quote to me the proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ and say, ‘What we have heard that you did in Capernaum, do here in your hometown too.’ “(“Prove it!”) And he added, “I tell you the truth, a prophet is accepted with honor except in his hometown, and among his relatives, and in his own house.”[6]

Okay, something happened between them speaking well of him and being amazed at his gracious words, because Jesus response to their questions reveals they he (as we will see at the end of this story) is amazed at their unbelief. If I could add a soundtrack to their paragraph of question, it would from something happy to something really brooding. There’s a seemingly ugly shift in the undertone. “You’re that amazing, huh? From your family? Prove it to our faces, here. Do some cool miracles for us like you did in Jerusalem.” And here is where Jesus, who had just returned from the Samaritans, really makes them angry.  

 “In truth I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up three and a half years, and there was a great famine over all the land. Yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to a [Gentile] woman who was a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, yet none of them was cleansed except the [Gentile], Naaman the Syrian[7]”[8] When they heard this, all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage[9] and took offense at him.[10] 

Translation: The Nazarites are the ones in Isaiah 58 who are the rebels, living ‘as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God.’ They were the ones who, on the day of fasting, did as they pleased and exploited all your workers. Their fasts ended in quarreling and fighting with wicked fists. And, as Isaiah had said, “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.” 

They got up, forced him out of the town, and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.[11] But he passed through the crowd and went on his way. Jesus did/could not do many miracles there because of their unbelief[12]— except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed because of their unbelief[13]. Then he went around the villages and taught.

(a) First observation: it is possible that really godly people are right in front of us and we don’t see it.

We dishonor others and rob ourselves of the input of the godly around us if we don’t see those whom God has placed ‘in our own country.’ They might even be in our own family, our own circle of friends, our own church. I wonder if there is a human tendency to think of the impressive, exotic and exciting things happening far away from us, when the reality is that God is at work in our midst. “Surely, God was in this place and I did not know it,” said Jacob. In the kingdom of God, the extraordinary is often hidden in the ordinary. 

I have been amazed over the years at the wealth of human resources in Northern Michigan. Famous, brilliant people live right here. Because I coach, I am aware of area athletes from small schools who go on to play professional sports. It’s no different in the local church. Godly, righteous people are seated in this room. We just have to get to know each other.  

(b) Second observation: The response of wonder at Jesus’ teachings and works was coupled with persistent unbelief and rejection. 

Wonder is not the same as worship. There was no real appreciation of His true identity or worth; all that mattered was how impressive he could be.[14] When Jesus only matters because he entertains us or makes our lives easy, we aren’t following Jesus the crucified Savior. We are following Jesus the court jester. I’m thinking of the movie Gladiator: “Are you not entertained!!” By the way, as far as we know, Jesus never returned to Nazareth.[15]

Jesus didn’t come to entertain us; he came to redeem us. If our love of Jesus hinges on how happy we feel or cool He looks or what kind of bells and whistles get added to our lives, we have badly missed the point. “My grace is sufficient.”[16] That alone should evoke awe, and wonder, and trust, and allegiance. 

(c) Third observation: God has concern for the poor and oppressed of all kinds.[17]

I have said this before: I think the physical realities in the Old Testament point toward spiritual realities in the New Testament. The poor, the enslaved, the blind, the thirsty, the hungry, the naked – God’s people were called to care about their situation physically in the Old Covenant.  

The New Covenant does not change that, but I think now the focus is on the spiritual application. Think of it as another example of, ‘You have heard it said, but I say unto you…’ Jesus didn’t do away with what they had heard; he added another layer to it that usually had to do with the heart and soul.

Jesus did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, so we get to care about people in both ways.  Isaiah talked about the Year of the Lord’s favor over and over as involving justice.  Justice is a big deal to God. It will characterize the presence of His favor. 

I hate that in our current cultural climate, the world “justice” has been redefined or hijacked in such a way that followers of Jesus have started to argue against its importance. We don’t need to run from it; we need to reclaim it. It’s a crucial part of ‘the acceptable year of the Lord.’ We can be for setting captives free physically and spiritually, for feeding the hungry physically and spiritually, for ending oppression physically and spiritually, for bringing sight to the blind physically and spiritually. In the Kingdom of God, this is both/and, not either/or.

(d) Fourth observation: Without the freedom Jesus brings, freedoms turn into either indulgence or oppression.

Christ is the only Liberator whose liberation lasts forever.[18] This is why a focus on physical freedom is doomed without the foundation of spiritual freedom, which not only frees us from something, but to something. Social justice movements, as well intended as they may be, will always distort into some type of injustice without the guidance of knowing what true freedom is,and what true freedom is for.

“You were called to freedom. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)

Far too often in history, the oppressed have either arisen only to replicate the oppression,[19] or they have exploited that freedom until their indulgence destroyed them. Unguided or unfocused freedom almost always devolves into the improper use of either power or pleasure, both of which can be terribly destructive. 

We see this in the Nazarites. Here is a people violently oppressed by Rome and sneered at by other Jewish communities because of their origins (“Can anything good come from Nazareth, in Galilee of the Gentiles?”) You would think they would be conscious about a) not using violence to acuse others, and b) not holding someone’s origins against them. But in a venue where they have the freedom to choose how to treat someone, they choose to replicate both those things. 

Lives freed from the bondage of people need to be guided by hearts freed from the power of sin. The Gospel freedom that Jesus brings to hearts, souls and minds is crucial if we are going to exercise the power of earthly freedoms.

When Jesus talks about freedom, He’s pointing toward not just what he frees us from, but what he frees us to. This vision is found throughout the Bible, but honestly, just looking at what Jesus and Isaiah say paints a great foundational image of what it looks like to live in freedom in the favor of God. 

• A world in which the poor have their needs met is good; a world in which the poor in spirit get their needs met also is even better. God’s people get the privilege of being involved in both. 

• A world in which physically oppressed captives are freed is good; a world in which the spiritually chained captives are freed from sin and spiritual oppression also is even better. God’s people get the privilege of being involved in both.

• A world in which the physically blind and lame regain sight and mobility is good; a world in which the spiritually blind and lame regain their sight and learn to walk in the Kingdom is even better. God’s people get the privilege of being involved in both.

I have a final point next week. Meanwhile, let’s simmer on how Jesus declared himself. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release (redemption) to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind,[20] to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[21]

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[1] “That this is the last time in the Gospel where Jesus is associated with a synagogue suggests this rejection marks a significant break in his relationship with the institution and the Judaism it represents.” (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible)

[2] “For judgment I came into this world, so that (Same purpose as here in Lk 4:18) those who do not see may see (Good News), and that those who see may become blind.” (Bad News) Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind (I.e., if they recognized their state of spiritual blindness, humbled themselves, and cried out to God to "heal" them) you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ (I.e., In a state of total self-deception and steadfast rejection of the "sight giving Gospel") your sin remains. (John 9:39-41) (commentary quoted in Precept Austin)

[3] The year of the Lord’s favor (Grk “the acceptable year of the Lord”) is a description of the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25:10). The year of the total forgiveness of debt is now turned into a metaphor for salvation. (NET Bible Commentary) Jesus reads Isa 61:1 – 2, with an added line from Isa 58:6 (tradition suggests that synagogue readers were allowed to “skip” material when reading the Prophets). Isa 61:1 – 2 probably evokes the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25), in which all slaves were to be released. Although Jesus’ reading ends with salvation, his audience would know that the passage goes on to announce also judgment. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[4] “This geographic area may have been sensitive about premature kingdom claims; Nazareth was just four miles (six kilometers) from the major Galilean city of Sepphoris, which had been destroyed after a revolt against Rome about two decades earlier (AD 6).” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[5] Regaining of sight may well mean more than simply miraculously restoring physical sight, which itself pictures a deeper reality (Luke 1:77-79; 18:35-43). Oppressed may well mean more than simply political or economic oppression, but a deeper reality of oppression by sin (Luke 1:77-79; 18:35-43). The essence of Jesus’ messianic work is expressed in the phrase to set free. This line from Isa 58 says that Jesus will do what the nation had failed to do. It makes the proclamation messianic, not merely prophetic, because Jesus doesn’t just proclaim the message—he brings the deliverance. “ (NET Bible Commentary)

[6] There is a wordplay here on the word acceptable (δεκτός, dektos), which also occurs in v. 19: Jesus has declared the “acceptable” year of the Lord (here translated year of the Lord’s favor), but he is not “accepted” by the people of his own hometown. (NET Bible Commentary)

[7] “Jesus here highlights their ministry to foreigners (and by implication the resistance of their own people as in v. 24).” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[8] Imagine the impact of Jesus’ words on Jewish minds. They placed women, Gentiles, and lepers at the bottom of the social scale. But here the Lord pointedly placed all three above unbelieving Jews! What He was saying was that OT history was about to repeat itself. In spite of His miracles, He would be rejected not only by the city of Nazareth but by the nation of Israel. He would then turn to the Gentiles, just as Elijah and Elisha had done. (Believer’s Bible Commentary)

[9] It is worth noting that it was not Jesus' claim that He was the Messiah that made them angry, but it was His suggestion that their reaction made to His claim made them like one of the worst periods of Israel's history along with the implication that Gentiles might be more helped by God than the nation would be. This is the only place in Luke's Gospel where he uses this term for anger. (Precept Austin)

[10] “They were offended not only that he compared them to the faithless Jews of Elijah and Elisha’s time but also that he suggested that Gentiles could enjoy the blessings of God missed by the Jews—an unthinkable violation of their cultural bias.” (NIV Quest Study Bible Notes)

[11] “Jewish custom suggested hurling a person from a cliff before stoning him, but it forbade execution without trial and would also forbid it on the Sabbath. Roman law forbade executions without the governor’s permission; this group functions like a lynch mob.” (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

[12] “And he could there do no mighty work,.... Or miracle; not that Christ had no power in himself to work miracles, though their unbelief and contempt of him were very great; but it was not fit and proper that he should do any there, since such were their prejudices against him: it is an usual way of speaking with the Hebrews, when either it is not "fit" and proper that a thing should be done, or they "will" not do it, to say it cannot be done; see Genesis 19:22; and even it is said of God himself, "So that the Lord could no longer bear, because of your evil doings", Jeremiah 44:22. Not but that he could if he would, but he would not; nor was it fit and proper that he should; the same is the sense here: besides, in Matthew 13:58 it is said, "he did not many mighty works there"; and so the Arabic version here, "and he did not many mighty works there"; he did not think it proper to do any of any great consequence, nor did he.” (Gill’s Exposition Of The Entire Bible)

[13] Not “weakness of faith,” but “withholding belief in the power and promises of God.” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon)

[14]  Believer’s Bible Commentary

[15] He once told his disciples. “If any household or town refuses to welcome you or listen to your message, shake its dust from your feet as you leave.” (Matthew 10:14)  He seems to have modeled that for them. It wasn’t as if those in Nazareth had no hope. We know the at least some of Jesus’ siblings eventually recognized him as the Messiah. Jesus’ time on earth was limited, and he intended to go where the soil of people’s hearts was ready for the seed of the gospel.

[16] 2 Corinthians 12:9

[17] “He does not come into our lives to fix what is already right; rather, He heals us from our brokenness and forgives our sin. ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” (Mark 2:17)  (NASB Charles Stanley Life Principles Study Bible)

[18] HT to Malcolm Muggeridge, as cited at Precept Austin

[19] It’s how The Hunger Games ended. So much hope that revolution would bring about a just new world…and it just replicated the previous government. 

[20] “For judgment I came into this world, so that (Same purpose as here in Lk 4:18) those who do not see may see (Good News), and that those who see may become blind.” (Bad News) Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind (I.e., if they recognized their state of spiritual blindness, humbled themselves, and cried out to God to "heal" them) you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ (I.e., In a state of total self-deception and steadfast rejection of the "sight giving Gospel") your sin remains. (John 9:39-41) (commentary quoted in Precept Austin)

[21] The year of the Lord’s favor (Grk “the acceptable year of the Lord”) is a description of the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25:10). The year of the total forgiveness of debt is now turned into a metaphor for salvation. (NET Bible Commentary) Jesus reads Isa 61:1 – 2, with an added line from Isa 58:6 (tradition suggests that synagogue readers were allowed to “skip” material when reading the Prophets). Isa 61:1 – 2 probably evokes the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25), in which all slaves were to be released. Although Jesus’ reading ends with salvation, his audience would know that the passage goes on to announce also judgment. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)