Sunday Morning Greek Blog

November 25, 2024

Don’t Worry; Be Faithful (Matthew 6:25–34; Acts 22:23–29)

Filed under: Acts,Ecclesiology,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Government,Matthew Gospel of,Prayer,Romans,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 8:50 pm
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America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Even in the last four years with inflation being what it’s been, the COVID pandemic and our faltering response to it, and the culture wars that have divided our nation, there really is no other place to go where we could have the guarantees of freedom in our Constitution to give us hope to overcome bad times and look forward to even better times and to renewed prosperity.

America is really the best place to live, I think anyway, where we don’t have to spend much time “worrying about our lives, what we will eat or drink, or about our bodies and what to wear.” Even the poorest among us have access to safety nets to provide basic needs like health care, affordable shelter, and food. It is true, as Jesus said, that we will always have the poor among us. Some either by their own choice or by circumstances beyond their control, may find themselves in desperate need from time to time.

Our governments, both federal and local should be good stewards of the “resources” we “contribute” to address these situations and other affairs of City and State. Sometimes that works, and I think most of us can agree that sometimes the greedy get in the way and misappropriate these resources. When that happens, people rightly get angry and demand accountability. We have charities and churches working hard to mitigate and alleviate these situations, and they often do much better than the government.

Even with the presumed good intentions of the government and ministries of churches and charities alike, I do hope we realize that these earthly institutions are fallible because they comprise fallible, fallen humans in their ranks. But on this Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical year (can you believe Advent starts next week!), I hope we recognize that the only one in whom we can put our unfailing trust is God Almighty, the heavenly father, who has as much concern for “the least of these” as he does for all the rest.

When we look at God’s amazing creation, we see that the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees all manage to survive from one year to the next and they don’t have near the intelligence that you and I have. We recognize the beauty of the works of God’s creation in nature; awe at the way the complex interactions of our ecosystems work in harmony most of the time; and marvel at the complexity of the design of each unique, tangible human body along with the capacities of its intangible mind and soul. And yet Jesus says that “Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these” and that we cannot “add a single hour to our lives” by worrying or counting how we might feed and clothe ourselves.

Jesus closes out this passage by saying, in so many words, take things one day at a time. Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will come soon enough. Jesus makes a promise that many of us have taken to heart: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” In other words, “Don’t Worry, Be Faithful.” Sorry, I haven’t written the words to that spoof song yet.

As I said above, we who live in America typically don’t have to worry about persecution coming from our government, although there have been some well-publicized exceptions to that targeting Catholics in the past few years. But in other countries around the world, many Christians do have to be concerned about such things.

My friend shared a newsletter from C2CMinistries, based in Hong Kong, that tells the inside story, the story you won’t get from typical media outlets, about the recent news out of Hong Kong about the sentencing of the Hong Kong 47, a group of pro-democracy advocates tried for sedition because they attempted to gain a pro-democracy majority on the legislative council in Hong Kong, something that had been allowed until the Communist Chinese forcibly altered Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” to prohibit such actions. Many of them have been in jail for nearly four years now.

But a couple interesting stories have come out of this persecution (and prosecution) that should make those of us in the free world sit up and notice and lift up prayers for the Chinese, and especially for these 47 prisoners. According to the mission’s newsletter:

One of them, an evangelist, has been faithfully preaching the Gospel every Sunday from his prison cell for the past three years. His courage is a profound reminder of the cost of faith in places where freedom is restricted. This also highlights the reality that Hong Kong is now fully under the control of China’s Communist Party leadership. How long before Hong Kong churches may face the same restrictions as those in China, potentially being forced to join the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement or go underground?[1]

This month’s newsletter from the ministry has other stories of the bravery of Chinese Christians not publicly affiliated with the pro-democracy movement who meet together for worship even in the face of close and contentious scrutiny from Chinese political and law-enforcement authorities. These believers are keenly aware of the promises of this morning’s gospel passage and trust God daily not to become victims of Chinese suppression.

Given these two stark contrasts between the relative ease we American believers have of gathering to worship and to freely speak versus the suppression and oppression of Chinese believers, this raises an important question for believers we don’t often discuss: “What does the Bible say about believers’ relationship with government?” How should we as Christ-followers live our lives whether in a relative state of freedom or facing oppression? On this Sunday, since we’ve got a patriotic theme today, I think it’s a good time to talk about this.

But first, just a brief history of the political situation in the Bible. We know that in the OT, much of the history of the Jews revolves around the monarchy that began under Saul and lasted over 400 years until the exile to Babylon in 586 B.C. After the exile, when they returned to the land, they seem to have been governed by religious leaders or governors for a time, until the OT goes silent around 400 B.C. We know Alexander the Great conquered the area late in the fourth century B.C., and controlled it until the Roman Republic conquered it in the second century B.C. By the time Jesus is born, the Roman republic had devolved into a monarchy with a perfunctory senate, and that is the government that rules Rome during the time of Jesus and the historical period covered by the New Testament.

Rome respected the Jewish religion and their independence. Herod, descended from the Jewish Maccabean family, was the regional King for Judea, but he was considered a Roman puppet. Rome’s primary concern was maintaining order and peace in the empire, so they typically had a hands-off approach when it came to the Jews, unless they sensed unrest among the masses. At the worst, it was a tentative peace, but we see signs in the gospels that some were looking for the Messiah to overthrow Roman rule and return them the glory days of the Davidic monarchy.

When it comes to how we should interact with government, then, I find it interesting that, in spite of the prevailing attitudes of the Jews toward Roman rule, Jesus never once says anything bad about the Roman government or about the way it operated in Judea and Galilee. In fact, in Luke 20:25, Jesus says “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”[2] Yet the mob that would have him crucified three chapters later accuses him of opposing the payment of taxes to Caesar. When Jesus stands before Pilate, he asks him if he’s the king of the Jews, and Jesus replies: “You have said so,” perhaps acknowledging (in a snarky way) that Pilate has the authority to proclaim him as such.

We’ll come back to Acts in a moment, but I first want to look at Romans 13, where Paul gives the clearest explanation of the what the believers’ relationship with government should be:

Paul used his natural-born citizen status to his advantage! He knew that Roman citizens had certain privileges and rights when it came to potential criminal charges, and the soldiers themselves seemed fearful that they had almost flogged a Roman citizen. I wonder if our political officials truly fear the citizenry and the power of our voices and our votes?

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. [3]

Although Paul was speaking under a monarchy, his exhortation here seems to apply generally regardless of the form of government. Greece had democracies prior to Roman rule, but they were quite different from our democracies today. In our times, each State is a “laboratory” of democracy, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in a 1932 decision. Our federal government is organized as a republic comprising the 50 democracies we call “States.” As citizens of a democracy, then, under a federal constitution that gives us significant personal freedoms, we have the right to speak, act, and vote to contribute to the good of the democracy. We should feel free to get involved at any level, if we’re so inclined. That could mean anything from speaking at or serving on a local governing board (city, school, planning, etc.) to working for the government in a civil position to serving as a State or U.S. Representative or Senator.

Most of us probably learned that our three branches of government serve as “checks and balances” so that no one branch of government gains too much power or influence. But our involvement in various levels of government, whether as citizens, public servants, or governing officials, can serve as a fourth means of checks and balances, especially if we’re not afraid to bring our Christian values to the table when appropriate.

Paul seems to have understood this in the book of Acts when he faces arrest and a potential beating at the hands of Roman soldiers. Here’s the exchange in Acts 22:23–29:

23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25 As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”

26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”

27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”

“Yes, I am,” he answered.

28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”

“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.

29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.[4]

Did you see what happened there? Paul used his natural-born citizen status to his advantage! He knew that Roman citizens had certain privileges and rights when it came to potential criminal charges, and the soldiers themselves seemed fearful that they had almost flogged a Roman citizen. I wonder if our political officials truly fear the citizenry and the power of our voices and our votes?

Paul wasn’t finished, though, upon his arrest. Perhaps the perceived threat from the Jews who wanted to kill him (some had taken a vow to do so!), so instead of being released, as he could have been, he chose to appeal to Caesar. Under Roman law, this put several things into motion. First, Paul was assured the protection of Roman soldiers throughout his various trials. Second, he was assured of being able to proclaim the gospel before Roman rulers in each of his trial appearances. This fulfilled the words of Jesus to Ananias when he was told to go minister to Paul after his conversion experience: “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name”[5] (Acts 9:15b–16).

The third thing that his appeal to Caesar does is assure him time to see that the Christian faith is well established in perhaps the largest city in the Mediterranean region. We know at the end of the book of Acts that Paul is essentially under house arrest in his own rented house, not in a jail, and he had the opportunity to meet and discuss the faith “with all boldness and without hindrance.”

As citizens of this great nation, then, we have innumerable freedoms available to us to proclaim the gospel and act faithfully, generally without fear of retribution. But even in a nation like China, we see those who are persecuted for their faith and the belief in freedom still find ways to proclaim the gospel even from prison. How much more then should we be so bold. I pray that we would use our freedoms to proclaim the gospel and work for freedom for the captives. Amen.

[1] C2C Update: November 2024

[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

September 30, 2024

Jesus’s “Mean Tweets”: Political Rhetoric in the Heat of Battle (Matthew 23)

Filed under: 1 Samuel,2 Chronicles,Biblical Studies,Ecclesiology,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Government,Life of Christ,Matthew Gospel of,Prayer — Scott Stocking @ 11:35 pm
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NOTE: This article looks at Old and New Testament passages. If you want to go straight to the Jesus/New Testament part, jump down to the Jesus, Paul, and Mean Tweets section.

The story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 is an inspiring one for young and old alike. A young shepherd boy, probably still in his teens, uses a sling and a stone to bring down the largest enemy Israel had ever faced. While David’s victory in battle is impressive and saved Israel from a potentially pyrrhic outcome, his dialogue with the Philistine can be instructive to us on how to talk to our political adversaries and enemies.

Goliath’s first taunt of the Israelites is arrogant and defiant, as one might expect, and disheartening to the Israelites.

“Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.”[1]

Goliath did this for forty days. I’m not sure why they stretched it out that long. It would seem that apart from Goliath’s strength, perhaps the Israelites looked intimidating enough that the Philistines didn’t want to trust their bluff with Goliath. But the Philistines must have gotten their spirits up when they saw scrawny little David coming their way. Goliath laughed and taunted Israel even more:

“Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”[2]

David probably realizes he needs a little humility here, so his response is one of faith and trust in the Lord first and foremost, but also confidence. He also turns Goliath’s threat to feed him (just David, not the armies of Israel) to the birds and says:

“This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.”[3]

Of course, with the help of God, a good shot, and Goliath’s giant sword, David defeated the giant.

So what did we learn from this interaction? First, David emphasized that he had an unwavering faith in what God was about to do through him. He knew he couldn’t do it on his own strength, but he’d also prepared himself for this moment, so it seems, by taking on a lion and a bear earlier in his life. Second, in addition to announcing his faith and trust in God to the Philistine, he also returned the smack talk and upped the ante on it. In the end, David didn’t have to eat his words, but the birds got to feed on his enemies.

In 1 Chronicles 20, we see Jehoshaphat calling all Judah to a fast in response to a threat from Moab. In this instance, there’s no communication with the enemy. Jehoshaphat offers up a prayer, and Jahaziel prophesied that God would fight for Jehoshaphat and Judah’s army. They sent a choir out in front of the army, and God set up ambushes for Moab’s army to rout them. All Judah had to do was carry the plunder back to Jerusalem.

A similar event happened with Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32 (also recounted in Isaiah 37) when Sennacherib threatened Jerusalem. Sennacherib talked a bunch of smack to Hezekiah and blasphemed God repeatedly. Like Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah offered up a prayer with Isaiah, but no smack talk back to Sennacherib, and Sennacherib’s 185,000 forces are decimated.

Jesus, Paul, and Mean Tweets

In the New Testament, we see quite a different picture, but the dialogue isn’t about posturing for war. It’s primarily about confronting the religious establishment. In Matthew 3:7, John the Baptizer sees a bunch of Pharisees and Sadducees in the crowd that’s gathered around him and calls them a “brood of vipers.” Jesus would repeat that admonishment in 12:34 and 23:33 when confronting the Pharisees. Matthew 23 is also where we see Jesus pronounce seven “woes” against the “teachers of the law and Pharisees” and takes that a step farther by calling them “hypocrites.” He has a host of other criticisms he unloads on them as well. They’re hell bound and leading others astray. They’re “blind guides…fools…men,” “whitewashed tombs,” and murderers.

Then of course there’s the confrontation with the money changers in the Temple. Even though Jesus would say the Temple would be destroyed and that worshiping God wasn’t limited to the Temple or any other location for that matter, he still considered that his spiritual home, because he’s passionate about calling it “my Father’s House,” which means it’s his by “family” connection, and he wants to protect the integrity of the Temple while it still stands.

Before I wrap up the biblical background on this topic, I want to bring in one more quote from the apostle Paul. In Galatians 5:11–12, Paul is teaching about whether circumcision should still be considered a meaningful religious ritual for Gentile converts to Christianity. He is so upset about those legalistic “agitators” that he wishes they would just “emasculate themselves!”

In first-century Mediterranean culture, a teacher would not hesitate to talk serious smack about those who opposed or questioned his teachings. If you couldn’t defend your teaching, either by rational argument or by brutally calling out the shortcomings and hypocrisy of your opponents, you wouldn’t maintain a following very long. Jesus knew this of course, so he didn’t worry about being “Mr. Nice Guy” when it came to confronting his enemies. After a while, it became obvious that his religious opponents, NOT the Romans, wanted him eliminated. No one else in religious leadership was going to say anything nice about him. His followers often didn’t have enough clout for their positive view of Jesus to overcome the negative view held by the religious leaders. Jesus was on his own, with all the fullness of deity dwelling in him, and that was enough to keep him going.

Bringing It Home

Here’s the question that bridges the interpretive chasm from first-century Judea to twenty-first-century America, and indeed the world: “Would Jesus have used ‘mean tweets’ against his opponents?” Oh yeah, I went there. Leading up to the 2016 election, it was easy to see that the media and the Democrats were out to get Trump. The big tell: no one in the mainstream media would ever dare say a bad word about Hillary Clinton, while Trump always had a huge target on his back.

You don’t have to look far to see that press coverage of Trump was and has continued to be overwhelmingly negative while coverage of Clinton (or Biden, Obama, and Harris) was and continues to be overwhelmingly positive. Trump would be criticized and fact-checked. His supporters would be lumped into a “basket of deplorables” and “canceled” or ostracized, while the sins of the left were overlooked or whitewashed. So if the mainstream isn’t going to say anything critical of a Democrat and use debates to fact-check one candidate but not the other, who’s going to speak up for Trump? Many conservatives are, but Trump’s voice is the one that needs to be the loudest for himself. It can’t be easy for him, but he keeps plugging away with a smile on his face and joy in his heart as he tosses chicken nuggets to fans at an SEC football game or cheers on the fighters at a UFC match. He must say the nasty stuff about the Democrats, because in this climate, most of us have a reasonable fear of losing our livelihood or even our freedom if we speak out against the powers that be.

If you haven’t figured out by now, I’m targeting a specific demographic of voters with this article. I know many believers out there who are struggling with voting for Trump because of his “mean tweets” or his name calling of his opponents. But from my perspective, and I think my article confirms this is a biblical perspective, Trump is just following in the footsteps of Jesus when it comes to confronting the “political” Pharisees and Sadducees of our day and age. The left has been increasingly using lawfare against Trump, but thankfully with limited success. He can’t just sit back and take it, though. Even after two people now have tried to kill him, he still presses forward, and he needs to keep standing strong for himself, the rule of law, the Constitution, and the American people and their way of life.

I don’t understand how someone could hold up Trump’s mean tweets against the lawfare of the Left and still say “Orange man bad; donkeys good.” If you’re a follower of Christ or a Jewish believer in God, I urge you to consider how Trump has modeled his campaign, whether intentionally or not, after the method of Jesus when confronting those who were trampling on the freedom God wanted his followers to live in. Our freedoms are in danger from the Left. There’s no third-party candidate who will save the day for us. Trump has a proven track record of defending our country, creating prosperity, and negotiating peace in the Middle East that no other candidate in history, except perhaps Reagan, has ever accomplished. Don’t be afraid of the mean tweets. If they were good enough for Jesus, they’re good enough for Trump.

If you don’t like the mean tweets, then at least consider this: Why don’t you be the ones who support Trump with prayers of protection and success, just as the Jews did in the OT stories above. You can play just as important role with prayer as Trump can with mean tweets. Don’t sit on the sidelines, though, if you don’t like any of them. No one you vote for is going to be a perfect role model of Christian belief and practice. Vote for the man who’s already shown you he cares about your freedom and prosperity.

My opinions are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

August 13, 2024

Debunking The Skeptics Annotated Bible (SAB): Romans 1:3

Filed under: 1 Chronicles,Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Christology,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Reliability of Scripture,Romans,Skeptic's Annotated Bible — Scott Stocking @ 9:49 pm
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I’m down to preaching on just the last Sunday of the month now, so I thought I’d take a stab at some apologetic articles on my off weeks and make a series out of the posts. I’ve referenced before the work of Steve Wells, The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (SAB), in which he categorizes several different types of what he considers to be deficiencies in the biblical text like perceived or apparent inconsistencies, worldviews that would not have even been considered in biblical times, and things he thinks are ridiculous or silly. He uses the King James Version of the Bible, which is probably in the public domain at this point, so he didn’t even choose a good modern translation to critique. His criticisms reflect an extremely shallow understanding of Scripture and the nature and character of ancient texts generally, so admittedly, his work is low-hanging fruit for those of us who are Bible ninjas when it comes to defending the faith.

Having said that, then, I’ll tackle Romans 1:3 in this article (≠329)[1], but it will lend itself to debunking some of the other related inconsistencies as well.

The first is Romans 1:3, citing the KJV text he uses:

3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;[2]

Here’s the 2011 NIV translation of the same verse:

3 regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life g was a descendant of David,[3]

And since this is a blog about Greek, I’ll throw in the Greek text for giggles.

3 περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα,[4]

The question Wells asks here about the contradiction is: “Was Joseph the father of Jesus?” Under each entry in the index, he identifies other verses in the Bible that he has labeled with the same number and breaks the list down into the supposed contradictory answers. Interestingly enough, he seems to have his verses mixed up in the index entry, as he lists this particular verse under the “Yes” answer category, while the verses in Gospels for the birth stories of Jesus that explicitly identify Joseph as Jesus’s earthly “father” are under the “No” category.

First of all, basic common sense would leave most people to believe that “seed” is being used metaphorically here, not necessarily in reference to a biological child of the person who produced the “seed,” but more broadly to the concept of “descendant.” In fact, when the word for seed [σπέρμα (sperma), ατος (atos), τό (to)[5]] is not used to mean an actual seed of a plant, it appears in contexts where the concept of having descendants is emphasized (see, for example, Mark 12:20–22, the concept of levirate marriage). So Paul in Romans 1:3 isn’t talking about Jesus’s biological father (bio dad for you young ‘uns), but about Jesus coming from the lineage of David, through which the prophets of the Old Testament declared the Messiah would be born. Pretty straightforward, right?

But let’s not stop there, because if Paul had intended to say David was Jesus’s bio dad, he would have had a perfectly good Greek word to use, and he could have taken it straight from Matthew’s genealogy in Matthew 1:1–17, and as such, I’ll address some other contradictions (≠326 Matthew/Luke genealogy; ≠328 Who was Jesus’s paternal grandfather?; ≠261 Matthew/1 Chronicles genealogies; ≠325 number of generations) Wells identifies, the discrepancy between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies. The Greek word γεννάω (gennaō), according to Louw-Nida’s reference, means “the male role in causing the conception and birth of a child—‘to be the father of, to procreate, to beget.’ ”[6] So this is yet another proof that there’s no need to identify a contradiction in Romans 1:3, because Paul didn’t use the same term as Matthew there.

But wait! It gets even better! While Matthew’s genealogy begins with Abraham, the father of God’s covenant people, and ends with Joseph, Luke’s genealogy begins with Joseph and goes backwards to creation and Adam, the first man (of whom Jesus is the archetype, that is, the firstborn of all creation). Matthew’s genealogy probably skips a generation here or there so he can fit it into his three “fourteen generations” pattern (by the way, 3 x 14 = 42, so Jesus is the answer to the question of “What is the meaning of life, the universe, everything?” Some of my readers will get that.). But you can trace the genealogy to a certain historical point from the end of Ruth and in 1 Chronicles 3:10–17.

The standard historical interpretation of Luke’s “alternate” genealogy is that it traces Jesus’s lineage back through Mary and not Joseph. Note that when Luke introduces the genealogy, he says “being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:23 KJV). But verse 23 is the only time we see the word for “son” in the Greek text. The rest of the genealogy is just the genitive form of the definite article, so it’s literally “Joseph of Heli of Matthat of Levi…” and so on. “Son of” can be fairly discerned from the context, but it’s possible Luke uses just the definite article to cover his bases in case someone is missing from the genealogy. We know nothing about Jesus’s grandparents on either side, so it’s possible that the simple “of” in the first instance (“of Heli”) is connecting Joseph to Mary’s parents or lineage. After all, in Jewish tradition, the child’s “Jewishness” comes from the mother.

This is just one example of the shallow and rather thoughtless and unscholarly opposition to the truth and integrity of Scripture you’ll find in Wells’ SAB. Your comments made in good faith are always welcome. If you’d like to read more critiques about the SAB, I want to recommend you to my colleague SlimJim’s blog, The Domain for Truth (wordpress.com). He is an outstanding apologist for the faith.

Peace,

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My views are my own.

[1] NOTE: As I go forward in this series, I will “tag” the index numbers so you can easily search for the contradictions among my blog posts.

[2] The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009. Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] Aland, Kurt, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Maurice A. Robinson, and Allen Wikgren. 1993; 2006. The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

[5] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.; those of you who know Greek will recognize that the noun is neuter, not masculine or feminine.

[6] Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. 1996. In Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., 1:256. New York: United Bible Societies.

July 28, 2024

The Lord’s “Lunch”: Feeding of the 5000 (John 6:1–21)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Creation,Exodus,Faith, Faithfulness,John Gospel of,Luke Gospel of,Mark Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Miracles,Thanksgiving — Scott Stocking @ 3:30 pm
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Historical Note: I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church on July 28, 2024. After the service, the organist, who also manages the rotating schedule of preachers, mentioned to me that the pastor who is the moderator for the Session (church board) had preached on this passage the previous week, even though we’re encouraged to follow the lectionary, and had said the “miracle” of feeding the multitudes was that everyone shared their lunch. As you’ll read/hear in my message, I make no bones about this event being a genuine miracle, and even cited a couple instances where I’d heard this pastor’s particular interpretation many years ago, one of which was from a guest pastor at Mount View when I was in high school (yes, I remember part of a sermon I heard in high school). I had no idea she had put that idea forward when I prepared my message, although I do believe God prompted me to include my own historical experience in my message.
I was standing with my mom when the organist told me that, and they both appreciated that I defended the position that the event was a true miracle of multiplication and providence. They had never heard the “shared-their-lunch” theory before and were a little confused about that, though it’s likely some sharing did happen in such a large crowd. It’s funny but sad that Satan knows Jesus could turn stones to bread but some don’t think Jesus could create bread from nothing.
–Scott

Jesus just wanted some alone time. John’s gospel doesn’t put the events of Jesus’s ministry in chronological order, so we don’t always get the historical context. In the Synoptic Gospels, we see that Jesus was quite busy with his ministry up to this point. He was traveling around healing and working miracles, even raising the dead. He had been confronting the religious leadership, sometimes through his parables. He even settled on his 12 disciples that formed his core group.

But the “triggering” event, it would seem, was the death of a beloved family member. The story of the death of Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist, precedes the account of the feeding of the 5,000 in the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to be making the point that this was foremost in Jesus’s mind when, as Matthew says (14:13) “he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place,” and Mark and Luke tell us that the disciples went with him.

But Jesus already had quite a following, so it wasn’t easy for him to get away from the crowds. Even though he was in a remote place, the crowd came out in droves, because they wanted to hear more, and Jesus did not disappoint. But as Jesus was wont to do, he just kept teaching because the sheep needed a shepherd. I imagine the disciples had started getting hungry and sensing the crowd’s hunger long before one of the disciples spoke up. John suggests Jesus was setting them up, as he already had in mind to do this miraculous feeding.

I think we all know what happened, but there are a few details of the story that are worth highlighting here. First of all, it’s one of the few accounts of Jesus’s ministry that appears in all four gospels. The main event of the story is the same, but there are some minor differences in the details of the story about who spoke and who acted. Some people might see this as contradictions in the biblical account, but actually it shows that there were four different eyewitness accounts and that each writer mentions specific things. For example, John says Jesus asked how they would get enough bread to feed them. Jesus likely knew that the disciples had been talking amongst themselves about asking Jesus to send the crowd away to get their own food, as in the other three gospels, but John doesn’t mention that.

The agreement among that particular aspect of the story is that Jesus and the disciples seem to have an obligation for the well-being of the crowd. But while the disciples are thinking practically and economically about a solution, Jesus is thinking miraculously and ultimately spiritually, and to a certain extent, ecclesiastically, that is, how he expects the “congregation” to act when they’re together. I’ll dive into that a little later in the message.

Mark adds what seems to be a reference to the Old Testament, just before the Jews received the Ten Commandments at Sinai. Normally we might expect Matthew to add an OT detail. Mark says the people sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties, agreeing with Jesus’s direction in John. This seems to refer to the time when Jethro told Moses that his burden as judge was too great and that he needed to delegate the resolution of disputes to capable men who could manage dispute resolution by appointing “officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties, tens.” That would make things easier for Moses to manage, as the lower officials could handle the small stuff. In the same way, the disciples would have an easier time managing the feeding of about 20,000 people (remember, the story specifies 5,000 “men”), even though at that point, the disciples still apparently had no idea how they would feed that many with a little boy’s lunch.

Now I want to emphasize here that I believe the feeding of the 5,000 was a real miracle of God’s providence for those who were following Jesus. Forty some years ago, some of you may remember the church near us that burned down (North Side??), and Mount View offered to share our building with them so they could continue to hold services. I think for a while we had separate services, then combined services in the summer. I distinctively remember their pastor speaking on this passage and suggesting that the “miracle” here was that everyone in the crowd was so inspired by Jesus thinking he could feed them with five loaves and two fish that they shared their own lunches with everyone around them. A few years later, I read that in one of my seminary text books as well. That’s a nice sentiment, but I. Now I’m relatively confident there actually was some sharing going on in a crowd that large, but if it was whole crowd, how could they have collected twelve basketfuls of broken pieces? Wouldn’t the crowd have kept their own portions for later? And the fact that the disciples and Jesus all seemed to recognize that the crowd didn’t have much food, and that they had stayed there listening to Jesus much longer than anyone had anticipated, tells me that God did indeed miraculously multiply the loaves and fishes for the crowd.

Bread was considered sacred to the Jews, so after a meal, they always had to collect any that was leftover, even if it had fallen on the ground. No five-second rule in that case! That’s the backstory behind the collection after the meal. But it’s worth talking about the baskets as well. Some of you may know that there’s also a story about feeding 4,000 people in Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels, and they picked up seven baskets after that event. The conventional wisdom is that the baskets [κόφινος (kophinos)] in our passage today were probably the disciples’ lunch baskets (perhaps because there were 12 baskets) that they carried with them when travelling, however a few sources think they may be larger. The seven baskets [σπυρίς (spyris)] in the feeding of the 4,000 story were thought to be somewhat larger, but we have no way of knowing for sure in either case. The point is, there was plenty leftover after the miraculous provision, and it’s likely that others collected the leftovers for themselves as well.

I mentioned earlier how these miraculous feeding stories tend to look forward a bit as well, both to their spiritual and practical significance. In John especially, the example Jesus sets here establishes the standard that allows him to say toward the end of chapter 6, after walking on water, “I am the bread of life.” His statement in 6:35 that “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” hearkens back to the woman at the well in John 4, where he says those who drink the water he gives would never thirst again. Remember, the Jews considered bread sacred, so when Jesus says he’s the bread of life, he’s saying he’s the life that comes from God and is imparted to us when we believe. Before he says he’s the bread of life, he mentions the manna in the wilderness: that’s what kept the Israelites alive for their 40-year wandering.

Additionally, you don’t need to be a scholar to see the connection with the Lord’s Supper. Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and distributed it to his disciples. When they saw him break the bread at the Lord’s Supper, I’m sure every single one of them was reminded of the feeding miracles. “This is my body.” “I am the bread of life.” If they hadn’t already made the connection, they made it at the Lord’s Supper. Jesus would be their life, their salvation, and they were to remind themselves of that when they gathered by taking the bread and the cup. He even says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” That must have mystified some of them, because even though he had been talking about his impending death, even at the Lord’s Supper they probably didn’t realize the time was at hand. He took the sacred ritual of the Passover and redefined it around his own impending sacrifice. No longer would it be about breaking free from the bondage of Egypt over a millennium earlier; now it would be about being released from the power of sin once and for all by his death. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” It brings forgiveness, hope, and peace.

In a world of traveling by shank’s mare or a real mare, people took their time. That’s why we see in the early church in the book of Acts, believers are meeting together in homes and breaking bread together, both for a meal, as the disciples did at the Lord’s Supper, and for what we know as communion today to remember the Lord’s Supper and his sacrifice. The life of the early church was built around strong community bonds rarely seen today. Back then, their weekly meetings probably lasted a full day when you include the meal and whatever instruction they received from God’s word. Today, most congregations limit their services to about an hour. “Everybody comes and goes so quickly here,” as Dorothy said about Oz. Even with all our fancy technology, we still have trouble staying connected at times.

Regardless of the size of one’s congregation, it’s important that you always work to foster and maintain that sense of community. Your potlucks and quilting bees and other activities are important parts of that sense of community and your identity as a church family. That sense of community and identity helps you discover your purpose and mission as well. Never lose sight of that.

[On the audio: Extemporaneous sidebar on the Walking on the Water passage. Main point: You need to let Jesus into your boat when the storms of life assail you.]

I know some of the best times for me, especially in this past week as my daughter Erin and her husband were preparing to move to San Antonio, are when we can have a leisurely meal at home and then sit around the table and play a board game together. After having her close by for over four years, it will be a while before I’ll get to see her in person again. I will certainly cherish that time, even though I lost every game we played. That doesn’t happen too often.

In our gospel passage today, we see that not only does Jesus have lordship over the food produced on land and in the sea, but he also has lordship and authority over the weather as well by walking on water. Because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, he is able to be a high priest who understands our needs and strengthens us where we are weak. He is our Savior, and we praise him for what he has done and is doing in our lives.

The stories of the feeding of the multitudes are not about how Christians can feed the world, but about how God “feeds” us and strengthens us in his Word and affirms us in our salvation. God provides for us, sometimes through our own skill and labor, but other times through his miraculous provision. May we always look to Jesus for the eternal life and hope he offers to us. Amen.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My views are my own.

May 13, 2024

A Mother’s Courage (Psalm 1; Exodus 2; 1 Samuel 1–2)

Filed under: 1 Samuel,Birth Stories,Courage,Easter,Exodus,Faith, Faithfulness,Greek,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Prayer,Women in Leadership — Scott Stocking @ 8:41 pm
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Message preached on May 12, 2024, (Mother’s Day; Ascension Sunday) at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE. Scripture readings for the day were Psalm 1 and Luke 24:44–53 (from Ascension Thursday).

I want to read the first half of Psalm 1 again. As I read those three verses, I’d like you to think about someone you know who might fit that description.

1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,

2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.[1]

One person who fits that bill in my life is my mom, and I’m guessing that might be true for some of you as well. I think I can make a pretty safe bet that some of your kids would say that about each of you as well. You know the sacrifices you’ve made, the labors of love you’ve persevered through, and the happy times you’ve provided to give your children a loving environment in which to grow and thrive. Moms, this day is for you, and this message is for you this morning as well.

I want to look at the courage of three mothers in the Bible who faced some incredibly difficult choices, the mother of Moses; Hannah, the mother of Samuel; and Mary, the mother of Jesus. We don’t have many details about their respective backgrounds or their upbringing, but their stories were important enough to memorialize in Scripture, so they’re worth a closer look.

We read about Moses’s mother in Exodus. Moses’s mother and father were Levites, who after the Exodus would live their lives in service of the Tabernacle and later the Temple. Pharoah had given an order that all the Hebrew newborn boys should be thrown into the Nile, reflecting an ancient, barbaric practice known as “exposure.” Exposure involved abandoning an unwanted child in a remote location and letting the wild animals or nature “take its course.” In Sophocles account of Oedipus Tyrannus, such an abandoned child was maimed intentionally to make them less desirable should they happen to survive or be rescued by a more compassionate soul.

Moses’s mother, of course, was too compassionate and loved her child too much to allow something like that to happen to Moses. Even the Egyptian midwives knew that what they were commanded to do—kill all Hebrew male babies at birth—was morally abhorrent. They conspired to tell Pharaoh that Hebrew women gave birth so quickly they had no time to get to the birthing event. She tried to hide Moses for a few months, but when that became impossible to do, she followed through with Pharoah’s edict, sort of.

She placed Moses in a covered basket coated with tar and pitch so it would float on water. The word for “basket” there is the same word used for Noah’s “Ark,” תֵּבָה (tē·ḇā(h)), so there’s an obvious thematic connection there: God’s deliverance. But Moses’s mother was not interested in seeing her newborn die in the Nile. Moses’s mother knew just where to place the basket so it would float right to the spot where Pharaoh’s daughter would bathe and find him. Moses’s mother took an incredible chance at this point, a chance that one of Pharaoh’s soldier could have found the basket first and killed Moses on the spot; maybe even a chance that the crocodiles, if there were any around, would get to him first.[2] She let her child float down the river, under the watchful eye of Moses’s older sister, until Pharaoh’s daughter would find him. In case you’re wondering, yes, the Nile does have crocodiles, but it’s not clear whether they were common in this part of the Nile. I’m guessing not if it was the royal bathing site.

Most of us know the rest of the story. Pharaoh’s daughter rescued Moses from the river, and Moses’s sister was brave enough to approach her to offer the services of his mother as a wet nurse, so she got paid to do her motherly duty! Moses would eventually grow up to be educated in all the wisdom and knowledge of Egypt, making him the perfect “rebel” to lead his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Moses’s mother’s incredible courage to keep him alive against the wishes of a tyrant led the most significant event in early Hebrew history, the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt.

From the time of the Exodus and entry into the Promised Land, we jump forward a few hundred years to the end of the period of the Judges. In 1 Samuel, we’re introduced to the family of Elkanah. He is an Ephraimite with two wives: Peninnah and Hannah. Elkanah had children with Peninnah, but Hannah had had no such luck, and in that culture, barrenness was the worst form of shame for a married woman. We learn in the story that Peninnah taunts Hannah relentlessly because she is barren, amplifying the shame Hannah felt. But Elkanah was acutely aware of Hannah’s shame and her desire to have a child, even giving her a double portion of the sacrificial meat after the sacrifice.

At one of these sacrificial meals in Shiloh, Hannah got up and went to pray for a child at “the Lord’s house.” Eli the priest noticed that as she prayed and wept, her lips were moving but he couldn’t hear her voice. He thought she was drunk. Hannah explained that she was in anguish, and it probably didn’t take Eli too long to figure out why, and instead of continuing to chide her for what he thought was a drunken display, he blessed her: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

We’re not sure of the timeline after that, but it would seem that it happened within the next year, Hannah gave birth to a son and named him “Heard by God,” which in Hebrew is Samuel. Out of her joy, Hannah agreed to dedicate Samuel to the work of the Lord when he was old enough to be weaned, and Eli took him under his wing. Hannah continued to look after Samuel every year, bringing him a new robe at each visit. Hannah was blessed with two more sons and two daughters as well.

Samuel turned out to be a shining light of integrity as a “surrogate” son in the family business of leading in the Tabernacle, especially since Eli’s own two sons were little better than scoundrels. Samuel would be instrumental in the transition from the period where Israel was led by judges to the monarchy and appointment of Saul and then David as kings of Israel. Given the character of most of the judges up through Samuel, it’s difficult to say what would have happened had Samuel, a man after God’s own heart himself, had not come on the scene when Israel went through its transition. We can thank Hannah’s courage and her fervent prayers for the birth and life of Samuel and his faithful work guiding the early monarchs of Israel into its Golden Age.

Hannah’s prayer (1 Samuel 2) after dedicating Samuel to the Lord may sound familiar to some of you. Listen to her prayer and see if doesn’t sound similar to a prayer of another mother who came on the scene about 1,000 years later:

“My heart rejoices in the Lord;

in the Lord my horn u is lifted high.

My mouth boasts over my enemies,

for I delight in your deliverance.

2 “There is no one holy like the Lord;

there is no one besides you;

there is no Rock like our God.

3 “Do not keep talking so proudly

or let your mouth speak such arrogance,

for the Lord is a God who knows,

and by him deeds are weighed.

4 “The bows of the warriors are broken,

but those who stumbled are armed with strength.

5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food,

but those who were hungry are hungry no more.

She who was barren has borne seven children,

but she who has had many sons pines away.

6 “The Lord brings death and makes alive;

he brings down to the grave and raises up.

7 The Lord sends poverty and wealth;

he humbles and he exalts.

8 He raises the poor from the dust

and lifts the needy from the ash heap;

he seats them with princes

and has them inherit a throne of honor.

“For the foundations of the earth are the Lord’s;

on them he has set the world.

9 He will guard the feet of his faithful servants,

but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness.

“It is not by strength that one prevails;

10   those who oppose the Lord will be broken.

The Most High will thunder from heaven;

the Lord will judge the ends of the earth.

“He will give strength to his king

and exalt the horn of his anointed.” [3]

Of course, that mother was Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her Magnificat that Luke records in chapter 1 seems to pick up on many of the themes Hannah had highlighted in her own prayer.

In spite of their very similar songs of praise to God, they had quite different circumstances in their lives when their firstborns came along. Hannah was in a committed marriage relationship. It’s not clear why she was one of two wives. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say Hannah may have been the wife of one of Elkanah’s brothers who passed away, and through the custom of the Levirate marriage, Elkanah would have been obligated to “marry” his brother’s widow and through that marriage provide an heir for his brother, her late husband. You’ll notice that the story doesn’t make any moral judgments about the arrangement. This could explain Hannah’s earnest and seemingly anxious desire to have a son.

Mary, on the other hand, was most likely too young to have thought of herself as barren, especially since she had not formally tied the knot with Joseph at the time she learns she is pregnant with Jesus. She wasn’t asking God for children when the Gospel writers introduce us to her. In fact, having any children was certainly not “top-of-mind” for her. She is shocked but does not respond with disbelief at God’s promise to her. Even though Joseph shows concern for ending the relationship for both their sakes, so he thinks, to save face, Mary cannot escape the fact that an archangel of the Lord had revealed God’s purpose and promise to her, so she presses forward all the while anticipating what was to come.

We don’t hear anything in the Gospel accounts of Mary and Joseph during Mary’s pregnancy until we get to the birth of Jesus in the stable. Luke picks up the story just as they are headed out from Nazareth to his ancestral home in Bethlehem, even though Mary is obviously in the last month of her pregnancy. She and Joseph persevere through the most unlikely place for a baby to be born: an animal stable instead of their comfortable home back in Nazareth. But that night, the shepherds in the nearby fields found out from a heavenly host that the savior has been born, and they hurry to see him that very night in his humble digs.

But her journey is far from over. Luke tells us Jesus was presented on the eighth day at the temple and receives the two blessings from Anna and Simeon, which must have hit her hard, especially the part about causing the rising and falling of many. Matthew tells us that on the heels of that dedication that “magi” from the East come to worship him and bestow him with gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I’m guessing that gold would have come in handy when God warned them to flee even further from Nazareth, into Egypt, because Herod, like Pharaoh of old, had ordered all babies under two years old to be killed. They were able to return to Nazareth a few years later.

It must have been quite the challenge for Mary to watch Jesus grow up, I mean, he was the son of God. What kind of behavior would you expect from a kid who had all the fulness of deity dwelling in him? We know from the gospel accounts that Mary never seems to be too far away from Jesus throughout his ministry. Of all the people who knew Jesus and associated with him closely, Mary would have been the one to truly understand his mission, especially when he started talking about his impending death. She may not have wanted to understand, but she couldn’t deny that she did, and yet she faced each day with and for him.

Mary is the only one of the three mothers we’ve looked at this morning to see what happens to her son at the end of his life on earth. Yet her incredible sorrow and anguish at witnessing his crucifixion was transformed to inexpressible joy when she encountered him risen from the dead. I’m not sure that Mary would have picked up on Jesus hinting at his own resurrection, even after finding out Jesus had called forth the recently deceased Lazarus from the tomb.

These three mothers, whose sons had significant ministries and a crucial mission for their own times, exemplified the kind of faith and courage that earn them the designation of Psalm 1:3: “She is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever she does prospers.”

Today, let us give thanks to God for the faithfulness of mothers who stood by us and with us as we were growing and maturing. We give thanks to you who are faithful mothers who even today give comfort and encouragement to your adult kids and to your grandkids. And let us give thanks for and encourage younger mothers as they face their own unique challenges in raising the next generation. May the peace and love of God be with you all. Amen.

[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] It does seem odd that crocodiles aren’t mentioned in this story. Perhaps Pharaoh had a “Croc Patrol” to keep the river clear of them where royalty used it for bathing.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

March 24, 2024

Rigged Trial; Real Redemption (Luke 22:54–62)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Easter,Isaiah,John Gospel of,Lent,Life of Christ,Luke Gospel of,Mark Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Psalms,Resurrection,Spiritual Warfare,Trial of Jesus — Scott Stocking @ 7:16 pm
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I preached this sermon Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024, at Mount View Presbyterian Church.

Click here to save 10% on various Logos Bible Software packages and get five free digital books.

“Lawfare” may be the political “term du jour” but it is hardly a new concept. The first known use of the word has been traced back to 1975, and at the time it referred to actions of an aggressor designed to try to declare military actions against them illegal by using human shields or other uses or misuses of the law to achieve military objectives. It has also been used to describe the attempts of some to question US military actions taken against terrorists, especially after 9/11. In the current climate, it refers to frivolous or unfounded legal action against those who’ve either committed no crime or whose actions did not deserve the level of retribution “the law” has thrown at them.

This doesn’t just affect political candidates or others who go against an “approved” narrative either. Some of you may have heard last week about a woman who was arrested in New York because she changed the locks on the doors of a house she owned to try to get rid of a squatter, someone who had illegally invaded her home and attempted to take possession of it by fraudulent means. The process to eject such people from a home you legally own can take up to two years in some places, and the owner is responsible for spending the money to prosecute the squatter and prove they legitimately own the home, all the while being denied access to their home. “The process is the punishment,” even if you’ve done nothing to deserve it.

As we come to our passage this morning from Luke, Jesus is being arrested after being betrayed by Judas and a violent confrontation in which Peter (at least according to John’s gospel) cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus. Jesus, even while under arrest, reaches out to heal the servant. Peter follows the crowd at a distance to the high priest’s home late that night. Our passage focuses on Peter’s actions outside the residence, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Luke doesn’t give us as much insight into what happened inside the high priest’s home, but other Gospel writers do. It’s there that we see some of the “lawfare” waged against Jesus.

Matthew puts Jesus before the Sanhedrin that evening, while Luke records the concluding element of the all-night trial happening the morning after. The High Priest and the rest of the council sort of back into prophesying that Jesus is the Son of God, especially with Jesus turning the tables on them in Matthew 26:64: “You have said so.” Basically, Jesus is saying that just by them entertaining the possibility that he is the Son of God, they themselves have committed the blasphemy they are accusing Jesus of. In John 11:51, we’re told that the High Priest had unwittingly prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, so he’s again unwittingly confirming Jesus’s true nature and purpose.

Another element of their lawfare was the apparent illegality of the trial. The very judges that condemned Jesus were the same one who bribed Judas to betray him. Technically, they should have been disqualified from judging him. Jewish custom of the day, as recorded in their other writings at the time, forbade capital punishment trials from taking place after sunset. Furthermore, their customs forbade such trials from beginning on the day before the Sabbath, because their custom did have an element of compassion to it in that you couldn’t decide a capital punishment case in one day, and a unanimous verdict was considered possible evidence of conspiracy. Jesus was never given any chance to have an advocate for his defense, either, which was another violation.[1]

All of this was done to fulfill the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 53, especially vss. 7–8, which said:

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was punished.[2]

One last thing about the trial of Jesus that night. Jesus quotes the Messianic Psalm 110 about being seated at the right hand of God. Psalm 110 is the most-quoted psalm in the New Testament, especially the first four verses:

1 The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand

until I make your enemies

a footstool for your feet.”

2 The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,

“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”

3 Your troops will be willing

on your day of battle.

Arrayed in holy splendor,

your young men will come to you

like dew from the morning’s womb. j

4 The Lord has sworn

and will not change his mind:

“You are a priest forever,

in the order of Melchizedek.”[3]

Psalm 110 was also a popular psalm to discuss among the early church fathers in their writings in the first four centuries of the Christian era as proof of Jesus’s messiahship and, especially as used in later parts of the New Testament, proof of his resurrection. Most Jews were not keen on having the Messiah sit at the right hand of God in heaven. They simply saw that as a reference to the authority of the human descendant of David who would sit on the throne. However, at least one prominent rabbi and his followers did use this passage and another one in Daniel to argue that the Messiah indeed was divine in nature. (For an in-depth study of this passage in relation to its use by early Christian writers, see Ronald Heine’s excellent book Reading the Old Testament With the Ancient Church (Baker, 2007) available from Logos Bible Software if you have an account with them or in ebook format through Christian Book Distributors.)

Now we know that at Jesus’s arrest, the disciples scattered, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy in 13:7: “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” Mark’s account of the arrest has a detail none of the other gospel writers have, that of a young man fleeing naked from the scene of the arrest. Some scholars have suggested that this was Mark himself, the author of that gospel. Even though the gospels say all the disciples scattered, we do know that Peter was able to follow the crowd that had arrested Jesus at a distance, which is where we pick up our main gospel passage this morning.

Now Peter knew from the Last Supper that Jesus had predicted he would deny knowing him three times before the rooster crowed but leave it to bull-headed Peter not to take heed to that, or at least, not to worry about any possible fallout from that. Or maybe it just went right over his head, thinking “Of course I won’t deny him!” The very fact that Jesus predicted that means Jesus knew his trial would be conducted illegally at night. If Jesus had predicted something like that about me, I might have been inclined to go shut myself in a cave somewhere and not speak to or be seen by anyone. But then, wouldn’t that in itself have been a form of denial? Even though Peter was arguably the most well known and the most vocal of the apostles, and thus the most recognizable, he still tried to conceal himself in a crowd outside the high priest’s home.

Sure enough, several in the crowd recognized Peter, first for his appearance and second for his Galilean accent when he protested and denied knowing Jesus. Each time someone called him out as one of Jesus’s followers, the rooster cleared its throat for that fateful crow. Had Peter somehow hoped Jesus’s prediction would be wrong? Or did Peter not realize that roosters always crow around sunrise? I don’t think the crow of the rooster was really a surprise to Peter, though. I believe he knew in his heart his denials, his lack of strength of character to acknowledge that he was a Christ-follower, were piercing his soul and conscience. Two weeks ago, when I spoke on the passage about being ashamed of Christ, I covered this, so I won’t go into again here.

However, I want to look forward a bit to see how Peter came out on the other side of this. Peter apparently had no idea what was going on with the trial of Jesus inside the high priest’s home. If he had been inside the house and had seen how the Sanhedrin was treating him, I wonder if Peter would have spoken up at that point, especially since there was no love lost between the Sanhedrin and the apostles at that point. If two people could have spoken in his defense, the whole thing might have turned out differently. But we know it wasn’t meant to end that way, because as Jesus had been telling his people and as the high priest had predicted, Jesus would have to die for our redemption.

Therein lies the irony of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. A rigged trial ultimately led to our real redemption. Not only was the trial rigged on the Jewish side, but once the Sanhedrin had wrongly convicted Jesus of blasphemy, they knew they couldn’t be the ones to put him to death. Only Rome had the authority to do that. So when they turned him over to Pilate and Herod, did they do so under the charge of blasphemy? Of course not! The Romans didn’t care about their religious disputes. Instead, the Sanhedrin changed the charges to usurpation, that Jesus was claiming to be the king of the Jews. That, they knew, would earn him the death sentence “In the Name of Roman Injustice” (INRI, get it?). The Sanhedrin had to stir up the crowd before Pilate to the point of making him fear a riot in order for Pilate to pronounce the flogging and the death penalty on Jesus, even though the gospels reveal some hesitation on his part to do so.

Jesus was crucified shortly thereafter. The typical method of crucifixion involved breaking the legs of the crucified so they could not push themselves up to breathe, but by the time the guards had gotten around to Jesus, he had already suffocated, according to John’s account (19:31–37). The fact that they only pierced his side but didn’t break his legs[4] was a fulfillment of two prophecies (Psalm 34:20; Zechariah 12:10). The water and blood that flowed from his side was a medical indication that Jesus was in fact dead.

Hebrews 9 gives the ultimate treatise on why blood needed to be shed in order for purification to take place and a covenant to be established. In vs. 19, we’re told that a diluted mixture of the calves’ blood and water was sprinkled on all the people to sanctify them for the new covenant under the Ten Commandments. Verse 22 says that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Jesus was the perfect, unblemished lamb of God because he never sinned. Although his body had been thrashed by a cat of nine tails whip, he had no bones broken, so he met the qualifications for the Passover lamb, which happened when God delivered the Jews from slavery in Egypt.

Here’s another connection you may not have considered. In Leviticus, Moses says that certain types of sacrifices, both meat and grain, could be eaten by the priests. When Jesus instituted communion at the last supper, he identified the bread and the wine as his body and blood. When we take communion, that is our way of connecting with the body and blood of Christ, not in the Catholic sense of the elements becoming the body and blood of Christ, but in the sense that we, like the priests, are partaking in the sacrifice first-hand. That’s why we consider communion a “sacrament,” because if we understand its true meaning and the reality behind it, we know that such an act has redemptive power for us. As one Scottish Presbyterian minister in the 18th century said when a woman who was not a member of his congregation asked if she could take communion, the minister replied, “Tak’ it; it’s for sinners.” There’s a spiritual benefit for each of us when we take communion, especially with a proper understanding of its meaning.

Getting back to Peter: he experienced real redemption in several ways after Christ rose from the dead. Jesus appeared to the disciples the very night of the day he was resurrected, and they all received the same blessing and commission from Jesus. John records his encounter with Jesus at the Sea of Galilee after Peter had apparently returned to the life of a fisherman. He asked Peter three times, once for each denial, if he loved him, and Peter emphatically said he did. Peter would go on a few weeks later to deliver the Pentecost sermon that started it all, the birthday of the church. History (or is it tradition?) has it that Peter was eventually crucified upside down on a cross because he didn’t feel worthy of the same kind of crucifixion Jesus suffered.

As Lent comes to a close this week and we embark upon the Easter season and look forward to our birthday celebration of Pentecost, let us not forget the sacrifice of our savior on the cross, and the provisions he made for us upon his resurrection and in the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost. We have a great Savior who has done great things for us, so let us not be ashamed to proclaim his name and his salvation to the world. Amen.

My thoughts are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

[1] See, for example, 10 Reasons Why the Trial of Jesus Was Illegal – Bible Study (crosswalk.com), BibleResearch.org – Twelve Reasons Why Jesus’ Trial Was Illegal, and The Illegal Trial of Christ | Christ.org, accessed 03/22/24.

[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] The leg bone of the Passover lamb in Exodus was not to be broken either (Ex 12:46).

Postscript: I want to include the study note from Mark 14:53–15:15 from the 2011 version of Zondervan’s NIV Study Bible, because it contains a harmonization of the various Gospel accounts of Jesus’s trials.

Jesus’ trial took place in two stages: a Jewish trial and a Roman trial. By harmonizing the four Gospels, it becomes clear that each trial had three episodes. For the Jewish trial, these were: (1) the preliminary hearing before Annas, the former high priest (reported only in Jn 18:12–14, 19–23); (2) the trial before Caiaphas, the ruling high priest, and the Sanhedrin ([Mk] 14:53–65; see Mt 26:57–68; Lk 22:54–65; Jn 18:24); and (3) the final action of the council, which terminated its all-night session ([Mk] 15:1; see Mt. 27:1; Lk 22:66–71). The three episodes of the Roman trial were: (1) the trial before Pilate (15:2–5; see Mt 27:11–26; Lk 23:1–5; Jn 18:28–19:16); (2) the trial before Herod Antipas (only in Lk 23:6–12); and (3) the trial before Pilate continued and concluded (15:6–15). Since Matthew, Mark, and John give no account of Jesus before Herod Antipas, the trial before Pilate forms a continuous and uninterrupted narrative in these Gospels.

November 12, 2023

Are You Ready for His Return? (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; Matthew 25:1–13)

Filed under: 1 Thessalonians,Amos,Biblical Studies,Chronology,Eschatology,Matthew Gospel of,New Testament,Resurrection — Scott Stocking @ 6:33 pm
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Click the “Play” triangle above to hear the message preached 11/12/23 at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE.

High school was a very important time for me with respect to my spiritual life. A lot happened in those three years in our family, the most important of which was a change I had begun to see in my mom. Without going into the “why” of what led to her transformation, she got connected with a regular weekly Bible study with other women, and I noticed a positive change in her spirit and her demeanor. That change was amplified by her sharing her renewed faith in Christ with the rest of her family, primarily by leaving little “Jack Chick” comic book tracts around the house for anyone to read.

Many of them were rather simple: short stories about someone looking for God or discovering their need for forgiveness or reconciliation, or even encouraging “right living.” But amongst those more traditional evangelistic topics, there were a few tracts that spoke about the second coming of Christ. That was a totally new concept to me, or so it seemed. I had been pretty regular in my Sunday School attendance here at Mt. View as a kid, and if we ever talked about the second coming of Jesus in Sunday School up through my junior high years, it never stuck. But now I was curious, especially because my mom had a new testimony about her own renewal.

The topic of Jesus’s second coming was the spark that started the fire for my own spiritual renewal, eventually leading up to the summer between my sophomore and junior years at my aunt’s ranch in Wyoming, where I discovered she had a whole collection of these tracts, and several copies of each to boot. That was the summer, summer of 1979, that I made my faith my own. I understood that I had a decision to make to finish the work my parents started when they had me baptized as an infant here, dedicating themselves along with the congregation to raise me in the faith.

Now I’ll admit that, in the first two years after that summer, I made the mistake that the late great preaching professor Fred Craddock warned about: I got so caught up in the second coming of Christ that I ignored his first coming and everything that went along with that. I nearly undid my renewal because I hadn’t focused on growing in my knowledge of Jesus and what he wanted from my life until that day would come. I don’t think I was alone in that, either. I remember finding a bookmark in the Zondervan store that said, “Don’t be so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good.” That kind of hit home for me.

Our passages today bring back a ton of memories from that time in my life. The world is a much different place now than it was 44 years ago. Many so-called prophecy experts or eschatologists of the day thought Russia was the evil empire, Magog of the North from Ezekiel’s prophecies, and China and Iran (remember the hostage crisis?) were the manifestation of “the Kings from the East” of Revelation 16. But it wasn’t bad enough then. Today, it seems we’ve come full circle, only this time it appears to be much worse. Some of the same players have come back to the forefront again, and we should heed the signs of the times. Let’s take a look at our passages today.

Let’s start with our 1 Thessalonians 4 passage that we read this morning. The passage describes what is popularly known as the “rapture,” even though that word never appears in the Bible. It describes a time somewhere in the future (at least from Paul’s perspective, and in line with Jesus’s own words from Matthew 24) when the world will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, resurrecting his followers first, then “catching up” his followers who are alive to rescue them from the final judgment of the earth.

The first couple verses of 1 Thessalonians 5, if I may borrow them from next week’s passage, tell us that day will come “like a thief in the night.” Now we may be tempted to think that day will be a day like any other day in our lives. As I started writing this section of my sermon, a commercial came on for David Jeremiah’s new book on the rapture, with video clips of people going about their daily lives just “disappearing,” with their clothes on (which I thought was bit odd), with nothing spectacular going on around them. But one of the Old Testament passages for today that we didn’t read, Amos 5:18ff, paints a very different picture of that day, and actually warns against being too excited about its coming:

18 Woe to you who long

for the day of the Lord!

Why do you long for the day of the Lord?

That day will be darkness, not light.

19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion

only to meet a bear,

as though he entered his house

and rested his hand on the wall

only to have a snake bite him.

20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—

pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?[1]

If you’ve studied this topic in the past, you’re probably well aware of the differing opinions about just exactly when this “rapture” happens in the whole scheme of the “end times” and the tribulation. I think this passage from Amos gives a hint about when that might happen if we put some other pieces of the puzzle together as well. I don’t want to dwell on this too much, because as Jesus says, no one knows the day or the hour when that’s going to happen. But we should be wise to the signs of the time and be able to discern at least the beginnings of that final era of our mortal history.

For example, some people think that what Jesus foretold in Matthew 24 has already happened, because he says, “This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” The question is, does “this generation” refer to the people he’s speaking to, or is it more broadly referring to the period of the Church? Those who believe it refers to the people he’s speaking to are typically called “Preterists,” which is just a fancy word for historical. For them, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70 marks the final point of judgment on the nation of Israel, and that is what is described in graphic imagery in the Book of Revelation. No rapture for us then! In this view, the age we’re living in now represents the rule of God’s kingdom on earth through the imperfect church, and there will still be a final reckoning of this history when perfection comes for good.

Others think the rapture will come at the beginning or half-way through the tribulation. Some take the phrase “time, times, and half a time” in Daniel 7:25 to say that’s three-and-a-half years, half of the seven years Ezekiel mentions about the last days in 39:9. But if you look a little closer at the Daniel 7 passage, you’ll see that God’s people will be “delivered” into the hands of the enemy for three-and-a-half years before being released. This leads to the very popular “mid-tribulation” speculation about when the rapture will happen. That’s the interpretation I learned as a teenager. But if you’ve been held captive by the evil in the world for three-and-a-half years, things probably aren’t going to be “business as usual” if and when you’re freed. It is nice to think that God wouldn’t want us going through the worst of the tribulation, but I don’t think things will be “bad enough” yet by the half-way point.

The phrase “thief in the night” that both Jesus and Paul use about the second coming of Christ is found in one other place in the New Testament, and it might surprise you where. It’s found in Revelation 16:15, where Jesus says of himself: “Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.[2]” Now in case you haven’t read Revelation in a while, Jesus makes that statement after the penultimate sixth bowl of wrath is poured out on the Euphrates. Remember, the sequence of sevens is seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls, so if these things represent a linear history, we’re almost at the very end of this final judgment. This begs the question: will Christians still be around through all these judgments up until the point of the final battle? What does the next verse of chapter 16 say? “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.[3]” Where is Armageddon, which is Hebrew for the Valley of Megiddo? It’s about halfway between Tel Aviv and the border with Lebanon, just north of the border with the West Bank. And immediately after that, the seventh and final bowl of wrath is poured into the air. Things that make you go “Hmmm.” I base my own personal views on the end times on this then, that the rapture doesn’t happen pre- or mid-tribulation, but at the bitter end of the world to save us from the devastating final wrath and judgment of God. That is our hope.

Now again, I want to emphasize that I don’t have any special knowledge here about these things. I’m just doing some investigative work on how the pieces of the puzzle might fit together and making an educated guess. I’m not trying to make any predictions about when anything is going to happen in the future; I’m just putting forth the facts about what Scripture says, and letting the chips fall where they may. I’m not saying I’m right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. I’m not that arrogant about my understanding of the timeline. But the point I’m making is that you can see how this Day of the Lord might be a dark and gloomy time as Amos prophesied. It is kind of scary, but we know for sure that God will win in the end, and in that grand thought and fact, we put our hope.

This is where our Matthew 25 reading comes in. Although on the surface this appears to be a parable about any old wedding banquet, it’s actually a parable about the final wedding banquet we’ll have in heaven when the Church is made the bride of Christ. Because the virgins don’t know when the bridegroom is coming, and they know he could come in the middle of the night, it’s important for them to be ready and have oil for their lamps so when he arrives, they can enter straightaway. If they’re not ready, they’re not getting in. There’s no turning around at that point and trying to get more of what they need to get in. Nor can anyone share their “oil” with them to help them get in, because if they share it, they might not have enough for themselves and may be left out as well.

If that sounds a bit selfish, it is, intentionally so. Each of us can, in the end, only be responsible for our own salvation and readiness, and we’d be foolish to give up that readiness for the sake of someone who wasn’t ready. God wouldn’t allow it anyway, because he judges each of us on our own readiness and faithfulness, as the parable of the sheep and goats at the end of chapter 25 suggests. Those who aren’t ready can’t ride on the coattails of those who are. Those who thought they could make excuses for not doing what God has called them to do won’t get a mulligan. When it’s finished, it’s finished, done, and over. Eternal consequences are locked in.

The Day of the Lord and the end times in general are topics of interest to many believers, and perhaps even more so in today’s climate. Unfortunately, at times they can become topics of debate as well, but we must never make one particular view of the end times a test of faith, because I believe there’s so much more we don’t know about how all that will play out. My encouragement to you, then, is to stand firm in the last days. Be ready. Put on the full armor of God as Ephesians says. Be in a constant state of prayer. Don’t neglect the fellowship with your fellow believers. As I’ve said before, we don’t know when our final day will be. Our last day could be today, tomorrow, or ten or twenty years from now. Jesus is coming! God will ultimately destroy this temporary abode of ours and establish us in his eternal kingdom, a new heaven and a new earth, in our new immortal bodies. It is and will be a place of perfection where there will be no more sorrow or shame, only joy and rest in the light of God’s glory, the light of the Lamb. Amen.

[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

October 29, 2023

Living the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:34–46; Leviticus 19:11–18; Psalm 110:1)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Ephesians,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Leviticus,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Proverbs,Psalms,Soteriology,Spiritual Warfare — Scott Stocking @ 9:00 pm
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Our gospel passage this morning contains the two most-quoted Old Testament verses in the New Testament. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” from Leviticus 19:18 of all places, is quoted directly 10 times, with one other allusion to it, spread across several books in the NT, not just the Gospels.

Psalm 110:1, which Matthew quotes in the second part of our gospel passage this morning, is the second most-quoted OT verse in the NT, with a total of 8 direct quotes of and another 10 allusions to the passage. But it doesn’t end there. Dozens of early Christian writers in the first 300 or so years after the birth of the church referenced the passage as well.

Jesus uses this verse twice in each of the first three gospels. The first occurrence is what we read here this morning, when he’s speaking to the pharisees during his last week before his crucifixion and claiming that he is the Messiah, son of David, that the OT points to; the second occurrence in each Gospel is when he’s defending himself before the Sanhedrin after his arrest and affirms his place as the preexistent Messiah and descendant of David. That was the statement that caused the high priest to tear his robe and accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Outside of the gospels, the NT writers and early church fathers use it to demonstrate his resurrection and appointment to the right hand of God.

You probably also noticed that Psalm 110:1’s popularity among early Christian writers pretty much forced the ecumenical councils of the day to use a form of the verse in their respective creeds; we read it every week here in the last part of the Apostle’s Creed: “He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”

Jesus knows his day of crucifixion is coming, so he’s essentially pulling out all the stops now as far as letting people know who he is. No more hints or subtle innuendos: by citing Psalm 110:1 about himself, Jesus is making the ultimate claim that he’s the Messiah come to earth. No stone will be left unturned before he breathes his last on the cross for our forgiveness, and one stone will be rolled away when he rises from the dead for our hope of eternity.

So we can have absolute assurance that Jesus is who he says he is: To the Jews, Messiah; to the Greeks, Christ. He’s the son of God, son of Man, son of David, three descriptions of the same person. He’s the one we can put our total and complete faith in, because we know how great his love is for us. And we owe him our very lives, dedicated to living out the hope he’s given us.

This is where we back up and look at the first part of our passage today for the two greatest commandments he’s left to us. Matthew and Mark place these commandments in Jesus’s mouth during the week before his crucifixion, while Luke has them much earlier, so it would seem, as a lead-in to the Good Samaritan parable.

Because these are the greatest commandments, we must of course be careful not to let the familiarity of these verses make them “trite” to us. Many of us recognize that these two greatest commandments come from the Old Testament. The “Love the Lord you God” passage comes from Deuteronomy 6:5, as Moses begins his final sermon on the Ten Commandments, in which we hear the oft-repeated refrain to “be very careful to obey all I have commanded you.”

This particular verse underwent a couple minor tweaks as it came into the New Testament. In the original passage, Moses says “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength,” as the NIV translates it. That last phrase about “all your strength” could be translated “all your utmost.” The word translated “strength” there is most commonly translated as “very” or “great/greatly,” so it implies the best of the best of the best, the utmost of the utmost.

In our passage this morning, Matthew changes “strength” to “mind,” which is acceptable given the otherwise generic nature of the original Hebrew. Mark and Luke add “mind” to the original “heart,” “soul,” and “strength” from the Hebrew. Including the word “mind” here is most likely a hat tip to the prolific Greek and Roman philosophers, historians, and statesmen and the knowledge base they had accumulated. That doesn’t mean Jesus agreed with Greek and Roman philosophers, however; it just means he wanted his followers to have some intellectual understanding of how his teachings and way of living were different from theirs.

Now loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind is noble indeed, and should be first on the minds of all Christ followers. But then there’s that second greatest command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Unlike the greatest command, which is found at the beginning of Moses’s greatest sermon, the “neighbor” command is tucked away in the middle of one of the most exciting books in the Old Testament: Leviticus, chapter 19, vs. 18.

Leviticus 19 reads very much like the Ten Commandments themselves, at least in the early going. But then beginning in vs. 13, after Moses gives the general command not to defraud or rob your neighbor, he begins to break down what that might look like in his “negative” commands. Listen to some of the context leading up to vs. 18, beginning in vs. 11:

11 Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Do not deceive one another.

12 Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

13 Do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.

14 Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord.

15 Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

16 Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.

17 Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.

18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.[1]

So NOT doing these things to your neighbor, I suppose, is a passive way of telegraphing your love for them.

The flip side of this, that is, the positive way to state this, is found in other scriptures, notably Micah 6:8:

8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.[2]

Proverbs 3:27–30 has some more sage advice about loving your neighbor with a mix of things we should and shouldn’t do:

27 Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,

when it is in your power to act.

28 Do not say to your neighbor,

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”—

when you already have it with you.

29 Do not plot harm against your neighbor,

who lives trustfully near you.

30 Do not accuse anyone for no reason—

when they have done you no harm.[3]

There’s no shortage of advice and commands in the Bible about how to love our neighbor. In the New Testament, there are nearly 100 verses about how to treat “one another.” If you have a concordance or good computer Bible software or Internet site that allows you to search, spend some time looking up all of the “one another” passages in the New Testament. It’s eye opening. All kinds of positive ways to love your neighbor: love, serve, greet, submit to, encourage, offer hospitality to, and so on. One interesting fact about this: the Greek word for “one another” (ἀλλήλων) in the New Testament is pronounced “all-LAY-lone”; the easy way to remember this is that “you’re never all alone with “all-LAY-lone.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that your quilt ministry, which we’re honoring today, is an important way to love your neighbor as well. Your painstaking efforts in cutting the pieces of fabric, arranging them in the various patterns, and stitching them together put meat on the bones of another scripture, Ephesians 4:28b: “doing something useful with [your] own hands, that [you] may have something to share with those in need.”

With all the help we have in scripture about loving your neighbor, you might think that’s always an easy task. But I think we all know better. Sometimes it’s very easy to love our neighbors; other times, there may be hurts or fears that run so deep that it can be hard to break through. There may also be times where “tough love” means we might have to separate ourselves from a situation because the pain or risk of harm is too great to ignore or too much for us to bear.

In those times, it’s good to know we have a God who loves us unconditionally and whose presence is always with us as we saw in last week’s message. But how can we as mere mortals love an almighty, all-sufficient God who has no “need” for anything from us? Just as God’s presence goes with us, God also desires our presence before him. He wants us to love and honor him with all that we are and could be, all that he’s made us to be, and all that we have, to the extent we are in-line with his commands and precepts.

Our reading from Psalm 1 this morning helps us to understand this relationship. The passage in our bulletin is, I believe, from the New Revised Standard Version. When I saw the first word was “Happy,” I actually cringed inside for a moment, because I knew most translations had the word “Blessed” for the first word. I had always figured that was the traditional word for “blessed” used by the Hebrews in their standard blessing: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the Universe.” But I suspended judgment and checked the Hebrew, and sure enough, it was NOT the typical word for blessing. The word does carry the idea of blessing, but it also refers to an emotional state as well as a spiritual state. One lexicon I looked at had it translated as an exclamation: “How happy!” Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian minister who translated the Message version of the Bible, picked up on that emotional aspect in his translation of Psalm 1, and I want to read that for you this morning. But I’ll give you a head’s up: if you’ve never read the Message translation, it doesn’t really read like a traditional Bible translation. In fact, Psalm 1 is about as far away from a traditional translation as you can get. The first phrase of Psalm 1 sounds a bit sarcastic, but it’s not intended to be. Listen, and you’ll hear why:

1     How well God must like you—

      you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,

      you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,

      you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.

2–3  Instead you thrill to God’s Word,

      you chew on Scripture day and night.

      You’re a tree replanted in Eden,

      bearing fresh fruit every month,

      Never dropping a leaf,

      always in blossom.

4–5  You’re not at all like the wicked,

      who are mere wind-blown dust—

      Without defense in court,

      unfit company for innocent people.

6     God charts the road you take.

      The road they take is Skid Row.[4]

That is how we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. We spend time with him by fellowshipping with one another on Sunday and throughout the week in our various ministries we have. We spend time in his word getting to know his precepts, statutes, and commands. We do things that bear fruit for God’s kingdom, for after all, Jesus said his followers would be known by their fruit. We “plant” ourselves in the God’s presence so he can nourish and sustain us, because that is how great his love is for us.

As the world around us continues to get scarier, with another mass shooting, a war in the Middle East that has Christians thinking about end-time prophecies and the book of Revelation again, and the general downhill spiral of morality around us, abiding in the presence of God and rekindling our love for him will become all the more important for our own spiritual security and emotional well-being. We can know without a doubt that God is with us; that’s an unfailing promise. We also know that his word will sustain us, for God’s word never returns void. Grace and peace to you all this morning. Amen.

[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] Peterson, Eugene H. 2005. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.

The Power of His Presence (Exodus 33:12–23; Matthew 22:15–22)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Exodus,Matthew Gospel of — Scott Stocking @ 8:31 pm
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In mid-17th-century France, a 40-year-old peasant name Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, after spending much of his early adult life as a soldier in the Thirty-Years War, sought admittance as a lay brother among the barefooted monks in a Carmelite community near Paris. During his time as a soldier, he became disgusted with the ravages of a war in which there was no distinction made between civilian and soldier, and he felt compelled by God to seek a simpler life where he could focus more on his communion with God. He was assigned to kitchen duty and served in that role for at least fifteen years.

He had learned how to read and write, and over the years, he had written down many of his thoughts about his simple focus. We only know of him because one of the spiritual leaders in the religious community interviewed him four times and learned of the incredible wisdom and insight he had developed because of his unwavering focus on his communion with God, even, as he describes, while he was engaged in everyday work. Some of you may know of whom I speak at this point: his written work was eventually published for the world to read. In the community, Nicholas became known as Brother Lawrence, and of course his surviving work is called The Practice of the Presence of God.

The book is impressive in that Brother Lawrence, neither an educated priest nor a sophisticated politician, had insight that put most religious leaders of the day to shame. There is too much wisdom to unpack in the short time we have together this morning, but I did want to share one quote from his “First Conversation” with the Grand Vicar to the Archbishop of Paris that reveals Brother Lawrence’s insight.

“That we ought to give ourselves up entirely to GOD, with regard both to things temporal and spiritual, and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of His will, whether He lead us by suffering or by consolation; for all would be equal to a soul truly resigned. That there was need of fidelity in those times of dryness, or insensibility and irksomeness in prayer, by which GOD tries our love to Him: that then was the time for us to make good and effectual acts of resignation, whereof one alone would oftentimes very much promote our spiritual advancement.”

Such words came about 2,500 years too late for the main character in our OT reading this morning, Moses. No one in the OT, not even Abraham, had quite the experience of the manifest presence of God that Moses did. Moses had spent the first 40 years of his life exposed to the best that Egypt had to offer, but he also was not untouched by the suffering of the Hebrew slaves. When he’d had enough, he killed an Egyptian and fled into the wilderness, where he, like Brother Lawrence, had the opportunity to reconnect with God.

But unlike Brother Lawrence, Moses apparently could not completely put his past behind him and focus on the power and presence of God once called. Listen the exchange God has with Moses at the Burning Bush:

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And Moses responded: “Great Lord! Let’s get started! When do we leave?”

Umm, no. Even though God had just told Moses in person, out loud he would do all the heavy lifting and all Moses would have to do is stand before Pharaoh, Moses just couldn’t take the focus off himself when he responded:

11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”[1]

How many of us have said at least once in our lives, “I just wish I knew what God wanted me to do”? Even though God had given him all these assurances, Moses just couldn’t comprehend that the presence of God before him and his people would be infinitely more powerful than whatever he might face standing in presence of Pharaoh. Maybe he was still afraid of Egypt. Maybe his experience in city planning in Egypt made him feel like relocating about 2 million slaves might be an impossible task. Whatever the reason, Moses was focused more on the potential troubles of what he saw around him and had a difficult time receiving God’s grace and appointment.

Fast forward through the awesome power of God displayed in the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and a solo trip to the top of Mt. Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, and by then, Moses seems to be getting a handle on the concept of the Presence of God, but he still doesn’t seem convinced by the time we get to the passage we read earlier from Exodus 33:12–23.

Let’s look a little closer at this passage and glean some important truths about living in the presence of God. First of all, when we walk in the presence of God, we can be leaders in our own way. Some of us may lead in small ways; others may have more prominent roles. Whether we’re leading one person into a deeper relationship with Christ or a community full of people to the same goal, we have the promise of God’s presence, but we need that reminder from God as Moses did here.

At first glance here, it may seem like Moses still hasn’t learned his lesson about what it means to be called by God. In Exodus 3, we saw that Moses was so focused on his own weakness that he couldn’t see that God would provide everything he needed to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. But at least here in chapter 33, Moses doesn’t completely reject the idea of continuing to lead, but he still wants someone to go with him. What he doesn’t realize, and what God affirms in vs. 14, is that God’s Presence (capital P) will go with him. Not only that, God’s presence will keep them from harm as they journey through the wilderness. The “rest” God will give them is not only the security of the Promised Land if they’re faithful to what he’s calling them to do, but rest as two million souls moving across the wilderness is no small logistical challenge!

Moses’s response to God has a twofold meaning: He acknowledges that he can’t lead two million people without God, and he seems grateful for that. But Moses also needs a visible sign from God not only for himself, but for the people as well. After all, it’s pretty easy to establish your authority over two million people if you’ve got a cloud by day leading you and a pillar of fire by night as your rear guard. Moses was one of the fortunate few who got to witness God’s glory up close and personal in the cleft of the rock. That was the boost of self-confidence he needed to continue leading God’s people.

The second thing we see in this passage is that God knows Moses by name and that Moses knows God has favored him for this task. The word for “favor” in Hebrew was translated by the Greek speakers in Jesus’s day to the word for “grace.” In other words, God gave Moses the task of leadership not necessarily because he was the best and brightest, but because he chose to gift and empower him with that task. He did nothing to earn it. This is important, because even in those few times we read of Moses missing the mark during the wilderness wanderings, God still affirms his leadership through what would become a 40-year journey for the Israelites. There was no “vote of confidence” among the Israelites if they didn’t like the way things were going. God was leading, and Moses was his earthly representative. Case closed.

The third thing we see in this passage is that Moses, like Solomon a few hundred years later, desired to be taught God’s ways so he could continue to lead and continue to find favor with God. He began to realize the importance of his role and influence in leading two million people on a journey to their new homeland. This was perhaps the largest migration of any people group at any time in history. Even today, some scientists claim they can still see the evidence of such a migration in satellite imagery of the Sinai peninsula. Moses had grasped the significance of what they were about to embark on after receiving the Ten Commandments and the instructions for the Tabernacle and its accoutrements. He asks God to “Remember that this nation is your people.” Then again, after hearing myself say that out loud, there might be a tinge of sarcasm in Moses’s voice. How many of you who raised boys ever said to your husband, “He’s your son!”

I imagine that Moses already had an idea of what he was in for after the year or two it took them to get from Egypt to Mount Sinai. His father-in-law Jethro had advised him to appoint a hierarchy of “judges” who could rule on the inevitable conflicts and issues that arise in such a large population. And certainly Aaron hadn’t helped with the whole “golden calf” incident just before this story takes place either. It seemed that even though the people had left Egypt, Egypt hadn’t left some of the Israelites. They grew impatient waiting on Moses to come down from the mountain and used some of the gold they had plundered from the Egyptians and fashioned it into an idol of gold. They had so quickly forgotten what God had done for them because they took their eyes off God and what he was establishing for his people.

This is a good place to bring in our gospel passage for today. Jesus tells the Pharisees that if the coin has Caesar’s image on it, give it back to Caesar. But if you are God’s child, be sure to give yourself to God. The Israelites forfeited the plunder of Egypt for an image that represented Egypt, and they never got that back. If they had given themselves to God in that moment, there’s no telling what blessings might have befallen them.

So what are the takeaways for us this morning?

First, know that God loves us and wants to lead us into his glory, so that we can share his love with those we encounter and point them and lead them to his glory as well. His presence goes with us. Today, we’ll likely not have a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night leading us. But we have something much more personal: God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in our lives is the confirmation of God’s presence with us. The Holy Spirit knows the heart of God and knows the love that God the Father has for his son, Jesus, and reveals to us God’s heart as we faithfully follow him and rely on him for strength and salvation.

Second, God knows each of us by name. Romans 8 says that as Spirit-led children of God, we are in fact heirs: “Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” because we share in his suffering that we might also share in his glory. What a marvelous thing to know the Creator of all the Earth knows each of us by name, and not only that, but knows our hearts and our hurts, and his Holy Spirit helps us get in touch and stay in touch with God even in our times of weakness. When we can’t find the words to pray, the Spirit prays for us. When we fail and fall short, the unfailing God is there to restore us. When we can’t find the words to express our joy, God puts a new song in our hearts. When we are broken, he brings healing. When we hurt someone or are hurt by others, the one who bore our hurts and pain brings healing.

Finally, stay focused on the Word of God. Moses and Solomon both asked God to teach them his ways and give them wisdom to lead. That is an attitude we all can model. God’s word never fails; it never returns void. It always accomplishes the purpose for which it is intended when spoken out loud and claimed for a promise. We may not see or understand that purpose at the time, or it may not be what we intended, but it will be effective nonetheless. Stay in community with the body of Christ as well as much as you can, especially as the days continue to become more and more evil. Only the members of the body of Christ can support the body of Christ. The world will continue to hate us, just as Jesus predicted, but stand strong in the word of God and in the fellowship of the saints around us.

Jesus is coming. If not today, then tomorrow. If not before we die, then after. We don’t know when, but Jesus does tell us to pay attention to the signs of the times. Pray for peace. Pray for safety. Pray for the triumph of Good over Evil. Pray for the lives of the innocent and oppressed as well as for the souls of the wicked and the oppressors. Take heart in knowing that God will win the victory, and that we who believe will someday be gathered to him in glory.

[1] Exodus 3:5–11. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

October 2, 2023

Obedient Sons (Psalm 25:1–9; Matthew 21:23–32)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Ecclesiology,Eschatology,Faith, Faithfulness,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Prophet,Psalms,Repentance,Soteriology,Spiritual Warfare,Work — Scott Stocking @ 10:54 pm
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Message preached October 1, 2023, at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE.

What does it mean to trust someone? How does it affect your life when you either learn that you can trust a person, especially someone who might be new in your life, like a new significant other in the life of your kids or grandkids? What does it feel like when someone violates your trust?

Our reading from Psalm 25 this morning lets us know that we can put our trust in God, even in the face of our worst enemies. One thing that is striking about Psalm 25 is that it begins and end with David’s concern that he not be put to shame. In a culture that valued honor above all else, shame could be devastating to someone personally, professionally, and even spiritually. David says the surest guarantee against shame was to put his trust in the Lord. But again, what does that look like? David paints a pretty good picture in Psalm 25, so let’s take a look at that.

First we see that David’s trust involves putting his hope in the Lord. That “hope” in God gives David the confidence to know his enemies will not defeat him. Psalm 25:3 has one of the two negative statements about David’s enemies: they are treacherous without cause, and because of that, they will suffer the social stigma of shame.

But David also shows us the path to avoid shame: He asks God, by his personal name “Yahweh,” to teach him about and guide him in his divine paths. In David’s day, pretty much all he had to go on for spiritual guidance was the Torah itself, the first five books of the Old Testament, and perhaps a prophet or a seer. He didn’t have all 66 books of the Bible like you and I have to keep us on the straight and narrow. David most likely had read the Torah himself a few times during his kingship; his many psalms that he wrote offer ample proof of how well he knew the Torah.

He also asks God to remember the good and forgive the bad. He first asks God to remember his own character, his mercy and his love for his creation. Then he asks God to forget, and essentially forgive, his own sins and shortcomings. But then he asks God to remember him as a person who can’t survive without God’s love.

Verses 6 & 7 here give us a nice concise pattern for a quick prayer should we ever need to utter one. Acknowledge God for who he is and what he’s done; cry out for forgiveness; and ask him to remember us, just as the thief on the cross would do 1,000 years later. The word “remember” here should not be overlooked, since it’s use three times. In the Bible, when God remembers, he acts. So when he remembers his mercy and his love, he shows his mercy and his love. When he remembers us, he loves us and reassures us of our place in eternity with him.

As an aside, there’s another application of that word remember as we celebrate World Communion Day today. What do most communion tables say? “In remembrance of me.” So when we partake of communion later, let us not only remember what Christ has done for us, but act on it by sharing it with others and recommitting ourselves as his followers.

In the last couple verses of our Psalm reading today, David again reminds us of God’s goodness and guidance in the lives of those who humble themselves before him.

These principles from this first part of Psalm 25 tie together our two gospel stories we read this morning. The first passage is an actual account from the life of Jesus as he encounters the Pharisees. The second is a parable targeted at the Pharisees.

The first story takes place the next day after Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do you remember what the first thing Jesus did was after his triumphal entry? He entered the Temple courts and threw out the money changers! And what did he say when he did that? “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers,” bringing together two quotes from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Because Jesus’s true father is God himself, and the temple is God’s dwelling place on earth, the Temple is also Jesus’s birthright home. He is the earthly steward of the Temple, not the priests or the religious rulers. Jesus’s first act after entering Jerusalem was to establish his authority over and ownership of the Temple as his rightful home. This sets the stage then, for day two, when the chief priests and the elders of the people ask Jesus where his authority comes from.

It’s interesting in this passage that these religious leaders don’t want to engage Jesus on the Scriptures he cited when clearing the temple. The religious leaders are evidently well aware that they’ve been using the temple as an excuse to place a financial burden on the people. Instead of addressing that fact, they try to do what? They try to assassinate his character! Sound familiar? But Jesus, ever the shrewd one with the religious leaders, comes back with a question of his own, which puts them in a pinch. Either way they answer it, they know they’re in trouble of losing their respect and power with the people. Jesus had already said that John represented the return of Elijah, so that put him above the religious leaders in the eyes of the people. If John’s authority was from God, the religious leaders should have believed him. If it wasn’t, the people knew better and would most likely rebel against the religious leaders. Only a nonanswer could save their skins in the short run: “I don’t recall.”

Because the religious leaders couldn’t answer Jesus’s question, which was a perfectly legitimate response in Jesus’s day according to the rules of rhetoric in Greek culture, Jesus deferred the answer to his question as well. Of course, Jesus had already demonstrated his authority at the Temple the day before, but he had also been demonstrating it all along with his healings and miracles he’d done in full sight of the people and the religious rulers. Any attempt to damage Jesus’s character would result in the same backlash to the religious rulers as either of their answers about John the Baptizer would have. Jesus’s response, then, actually helps the religious rulers save face as well.

Jesus was obedient as a son to his Father by defending both the honor of the Temple and his own honor as the true image of God on earth. In the second story from the Gospel reading today, a parable, we have two sons who would in that culture be expected to do their father’s will when asked. The first one says no, but then later reconsiders and decides to go anyway. The second one says he will go, but he never does. The first and I think most important point from the parable is that God expects us to do his will. There’s really no hiding from that.

At first glance, you might think the parable is about keeping your word to do what you promised. But then, if the son who said he wouldn’t go never actually went, would he really deserve anything for keeping his word if he didn’t do his father’s will? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But by the same token, the son who said he would go but didn’t is in a bit of double jeopardy. Not only has he not kept his word, but he’s failed to do his father’s will as well.

The point of the parable, then, is not how or when you do God’s will, but THAT you do God’s will. Jesus goes on to continue the comparison to John the Baptizer’s ministry that he began in the first part of our Gospel reading. The religious leaders had not heeded John’s warnings to repent, but the “tax collectors and the prostitutes” did believe him and they repented, thus gaining access to the kingdom of God. Their past didn’t matter. God accepts those who humbly come to him in repentance seeking forgiveness.

But the more amazing thing is that, even after the tax collectors and sinners began to repent and turn back to God, the religious leaders still refused to repent themselves! They could see the work of God happening right before their eyes, but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe it. Jesus says earlier in Matthew that his followers would be known by the fruit they bear. Those who do his will bear good fruit. Those who do not bear no fruit or bad fruit.

It’s not clear why the religious leaders didn’t see the importance of John’s (and Jesus’s) message of repentance. The biblical story is full of examples from the patriarchs and other men of faith who repented and went on to do great things for God.

Abraham took Sarah’s slave as a second wife and had a child by her, but God still allowed the line of his chosen people to descend from Sarah.

Abraham and Isaac both lied to kings about their respective relationships with their own wives, but God continued to propagate that family line as his chosen people.

Moses directly disobeyed God’s command, yet God still allowed him to finish his task of leading the people to the doorstep of the Promised Land.

David committed adultery and had the husband of the woman killed in battle, but God still used him to lead Israel to greatness and write numerous inspiring Psalms that are still with us today.

Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, yet God still allowed his wisdom to survive the ages in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

In Isaiah’s day, Hezekiah repented while Jerusalem was under siege, and he witnessed the miraculous fatal judgment upon 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers overnight.

Every single one of Jesus’s disciples, with the exception of John, abandoned him on the night of his arrest, and Peter denied knowing him, yet all except Judas were restored to leadership status by Jesus after his resurrection. Peter went on to preach at the birth of the church on Pentecost. The teaching of the apostles was the standard of the early church according to Acts 2:42.

Paul persecuted the early church and tacitly approved of the stoning of Steven, yet God used him to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, and his letters form a significant portion of our Scriptures today.

Jesus never promised that the path of following him would be without struggle and effort, failure and heartache. When he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” we can’t forget that we still have a “yoke” on; there’s still fertile ground to plow, and that takes some measure of strength and effort. In researching this passage, I came across an anonymous Jewish parable that the rabbis used to teach a similar point to this one. It goes like this:

The matter may be compared to someone sitting at a crossroads. Before him were two paths. One of them began in clear ground but ended in thorns. The other began in thorns but ended in clear ground….

So did Moses say to Israel, “You see how the wicked flourish in the is world, for two or three days succeeding. But in the end they will have occasion for regret.” So it is said, “For there shall be no reward for the evil man” (Proverbs 24:20)….”You see the righteous, who are distressed in this world? For two or three days they are distressed, but in the end they will have occasion for rejoicing.” And so it is said, “That he may prove you, to do you good at the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). (Sifre to Deut. 53).[1]

So following God may have its thorny patches in the beginning, but when we get to the end of the road, the path is clear and welcoming. But if we try to go our own way, thinking that might be the easier way, and never get on the right path with God, we can only expect trouble in the end. The tax collectors and prostitutes realized they were on the wrong path and changed their ways and their destination. I know many of you have been on the right path, and you’ve experienced your thorny times, but you are stronger, wiser, and more dedicated to God for that because you know his is and will continue leading your through it. Your obedience will yield a great reward. I would encourage you to remain firm and steadfast on that path.

So we see how the truths of Psalm 25 play out in these two stories from the Gospel of Matthew. If we put our trust in God and allow him to guide us, even through the most difficult times, we will know his reward and his glory. I pray that each of us here will continue on that straight and narrow path that is the road to eternal life. Peace to you all. Amen.

[1][1] Trans. Jacob Neusner, Sifre to Deuteronomy, vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), pp. 175‒76.

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