Sunday Morning Greek Blog

January 26, 2025

Jesus and the “Good News” of Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:14–21)

Filed under: Acts,Baptism of Jesus,Biblical Studies,Christology,Christology,Ecclesiology,Ephesians,Eschatology,Evangelism,Isaiah,Luke Gospel of,Prayer,Soteriology,Thanksgiving,Theology, Biblical,Theophany — Scott Stocking @ 10:22 pm
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Message preached at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, Nebraska, January 26, 2025.

What do you remember about your first day on the job you wound up loving the most? Was it the people you met or the other new hires you were onboarded with? The excitement of doing something new and different? The thought of accomplishing the tasks that lay ahead of you, either on your own or with a team of people? I’m sure many of you have some fond memories of your first day on the job you loved and beyond.

How would you like to have Jesus’s first day on the job of being Messiah. “Um, son, before you get to the preaching and teaching, which I know you love to do, you’re going to have to spend a few days in the wilderness. Forty days to be exact. Oh, and you can’t eat while you’re out there, so you’ll be hungry. But some guy called the devil will ask you to use your powers to make bread and feed yourself, but you can’t eat it. You’ll know why, and you’ll tell the devil why you know why. He’ll offer to make you king of the world, but you’ll turn that down too, and don’t forget about being hungry. He’ll tempt you to use your superhuman powers, but you’ll turn those down too, aaaand you’ll still be hungry. But don’t worry; I’ve got your back.”

Of course, we know Jesus survived his temptation in the wilderness. But amazingly, after going through all of the temptations and not eating for 40 days and being completely famished on the last day, the one thing Jesus did NOT lose was the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in his life. The temptation passage begins in Luke 4:1 with “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.”

It shouldn’t surprise us then that when Jesus’s time in the desert had ended, our Gospel text this morning says: “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.” This was Jesus’s first recorded sermon (he had already presented many other times according to his “custom” v.16), so he wasn’t new to this. But this was, apparently, his first message in his hometown of Nazareth, so this was a big deal. After spending 40 days fasting in the wilderness, I think most of us would need the power of God’s Spirit to get us anywhere, even just a few steps! Like Mark’s gospel, this suggests an urgency to Jesus’s message and preaching as well as his eagerness to do so. After all, this is what he had come to say and do.

The passage Jesus quotes is from Isaiah 61, part of the “final countdown” in Isaiah 60–66 as Isaiah begins to preach about the glory of Zion and work his way to a discussion of the new heavens and new earth, most likely part of the source material for the Revelation to John. So in one sense, by reading this passage, which was probably just the next one up in the reading schedule, Jesus was signaling it was the beginning of the end of the old way of God dealing with his creation.

Jesus, then, is not just speaking about his own ministry that he’s embarked on, but about the final consummation of history at his second coming as well. So even though the hope of his first coming has now been realized, he almost immediately sets the table to establish that there will be a second coming as well. The Jews had been thinking the Messiah would overthrow Roman rule, but in reality, Jesus is bringing a message of salvation for all to hear because he wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

Let’s break down this statement. First of all, he says “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.” Jesus can say this because in the previous chapter, 3:21–22, Luke tells us of Jesus’s baptism and heavenly acknowledgment that he was in fact God’s son. That’s pretty direct and easy to understand.

Related to that then is the “anointing” that is mentioned, which is nothing more than the infilling of the Spirit, or in Jesus’s case, the visual representation of that infilling that happened at his baptism. But there is a deeper level of meaning here in that this could also be a reference to the anointing that a priest or a king would receive upon taking one of those offices. Those anointings typically involved olive oil to represent the Spirit, but in this case, since they would have seen “the Holy Spirit descend[ing] on him in bodily form like a dove,”[1] there would be no need for the symbolism of the oil. It’s possible the author of Hebrews is referring to this chapter when he writes the following about Jesus in 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”[2]

“Proclaiming the good news” is an action (i.e., a verb) that we see throughout the Scriptures, but often, we’re left with just that phrase, and we don’t get an idea of the “content” of the good news. It’s like saying, “Read the New York Post,” but then never seeing any articles to read. I did a little digging through Scripture and found several places where we get an idea about what the biblical authors thought about the content of “the good news.”

In Luke’s gospel and his sequel, Acts, he mentions “the good news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43, 8:1, 16:16; Acts 8:12). Scattered through the rest of the New Testament, we see other qualifiers for the good news. Acts 5:42 speaks of “proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah,” the redeemer promised in the Old Testament. In Galatians 1:23, Paul is described as the one “now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” In Ephesians 2:17, he “preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” Acts 10:36 mentions the “good news of peace” as well. In Luke 2:10, the “good news” the heavenly host refers to is the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem.

When the noun is used, it’s almost always translated as “gospel” in the New Testament, regardless of author. The noun also carries some of the ideas of the verb: “gospel of the kingdom,” “gospel of peace,” and so on. Occasionally, though, it’s categorized more personally. Paul refers to “my gospel” sometimes, not that he had a different one from Jesus but that he had a distinctive message and ministry. Several times it’s called “the gospel of Christ,” indicating the ultimate source of the gospel. In the Thessalonian epistles, Paul also adds references to “the Gospel of God” and “the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In other places we read about “the truth of the gospel.” Ephesians 1:13 takes that a bit farther by calling it “the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”

In a nutshell, then, the gospel or the good news is that we can have a new kind of relationship with God. It’s not like the sacrificial system where everyone had to bring a sacrifice for themselves; the good news is that Christ was sacrificed once for all and invited us into his kingdom of peace that he now reigns over. We are citizens in a heavenly kingdom, the heavenly realm, even while we are struggling through life on earth. That is the glory, joy, and promise of the gospel!

For Jesus, at least in this passage, his target audience seems to be the “poor.” The “poor” appear several times as the target audience for his preaching. In today’s passage, the poor seem to be broken out into three groups: the imprisoned, the blind, and the oppressed. Generally speaking, the poor may not necessarily be those who have few possessions. In the Beatitudes, we have the familiar opening statement, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (note the kingdom talk there). That may be supported by the OT version of the passage (Isaiah 61:1), where Isaiah puts these words in the servant’s mouth: “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.” The gospel writers also remind us that the poor will always be with us, but that’s not an excuse never to help them. Both passages have the line about proclaiming “freedom for the captives,” but Isaiah says, “release from darkness for the prisoners” while Luke understands that as “recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” The first part of that last phrase is a pretty strong parallel to Isaiah’s “release form darkness,” but it would seem Jesus is using “oppressed” to embrace all three groups, or at least that he considers the oppressed to live in a similar type of darkness.

If we continue to take our cues from comparing this passage with Isaiah’s, we see that “The year of the Lord’s favor” most likely refers to “the day of the vengeance of our God.” In other words, Jesus is hinting at the end of the story in his first public appearance.

If you were to go on through some of the following verses in Isaiah 61, you might be surprised to find additional parallels to the Beatitudes. At the end of 61:2, we see the purpose statement: “to comfort all who mourn.” Sounds like one of those beatitudes, right? And what about “Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will filled” compared to 61:3: “They will be called oaks of righteousness.” Even the final verse of the Beatitudes has its parallel. Compare “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven”[3] to Isaiah 61:7:

Instead of your shame

you will receive a double portion,

and instead of disgrace

you will rejoice in your inheritance.

And so you will inherit a double portion in your land,

and everlasting joy will be yours. [4]

If all this wasn’t enough for people to be perhaps a little shocked at the claim he was making about himself, Jesus puts the exclamation point on it as he’s closing the scroll: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” If they would have had the “head exploding” emoji back then, he probably would have gotten a ton of those on his live stream when he said that.

Jesus’s opening sermon as recorded in Luke was not a bunch of braggadocio or promises made but never kept. Jesus lived out all that in his ministry by healing the blind and the lame; stopping the bleeding of a woman who’d had that condition for over 12 years; and exorcising the satanic demons of those so oppressed. Jesus was indeed the son of God, worthy of our praise, honor, and attention. He would show and has shown us a path of “least resistance” to draw closer to God. As we draw closer to him, we build up that strength of character that enables us to persevere even in the most difficult times. May the gospel of Christ bring you peace and assurance this week. Amen.

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.

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

August 25, 2024

Courage for the Battle (John 6:56–69; Ephesians 6:10–20)

Filed under: "I Am" Statements,Biblical Studies,Courage,Ecclesiology,Ephesians,Evangelism,Greek,Isaiah,Jeremiah,John Gospel of,Life of Christ,Miracles,Prayer,Psalms,Spiritual Warfare,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 6:31 pm
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Historical Note: Preached at Mount View Presbyterian Church on August 25, 2024, Omaha, NE.

Related Articles:

I Am the Bread of Life

Take Heart! (θαρσέω tharseō, Matthew 9:2, 22)

Helmet of Salvation (Isaiah 59:17; Ephesians 6:17)

Spiritual Warfare in Ephesians

When I was here last month, I spoke about the feeding of the 5,000, one of the seven miracles that John records Jesus performed during his ministry to go along with the seven foundational “I am” statements that Jesus makes about himself. It is interesting that another one of those seven miracles, Jesus walking on water, which apparently has nothing to do with bread, interrupts John’s account of the miraculous provision of bread at the beginning of John 6 and Jesus’s testimony “I am the bread of life” and what that means for his followers.

There are some “clues,” let’s call them, in John 6 that I want to highlight, because they will be important when we look at the other New Testament reading from the lectionary this morning, Ephesians 6, in a few minutes. The highlight of Jesus’s walking on water, which appears in three of the four gospels, is not Peter getting out of the boat and walking on water himself to Jesus, which only Matthew records, but Jesus’s own comforting words to his frightened disciples as they see him walking across the stormy sea: “Take Heart!” “Take Courage!” “I am. Don’t be afraid!”

This is the second time in John’s gospel where Jesus declares “I am.” The first was with the woman at the well in John 4, his first formal declaration (at least in John’s gospel) of who he is. In that context, that simple declaration, that he was the Messiah, brought incredible freedom to a woman who was haunted by and ashamed of her own past, which in turn gave her the courage to run back to her village and declare that she had indeed discovered the Messiah.

There is no doubt that Peter experienced that same kind of freedom when Christ reached out to him and saved him from his lack of faith as he began to sink into the stormy sea, perhaps a type of what Paul would later say about baptism in Romans 6, that the old man is buried and the new is raised up in the life of Jesus.

This leads into the context of the Gospel passage today. Jesus begins to discuss what it is the disciples are really looking for: food that endures to eternal life. In other words, just as Jesus walking on the water was a supernatural miracle; just as Jesus’s knowledge of the history of the woman at the well was supernatural, so too will our relationship with him have a supernatural quality. In 6:35, Jesus makes the first of his seven foundational “I am” statements that describe who he is: “I am the bread of life,” and he begins to “flesh” that out, some might say literally, as he continues to teach his disciples the significance of that statement.

He connects that statement with the miraculous provision of manna in the desert while the Jews were wandering in the wilderness (v. 41): “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” He is the one who will sustain us if we “feast” on him. He drills down even deeper (v. 51): “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” The manna sustained them for day. Jesus, as the bread of life, sustains us eternally, something he demonstrated in the feeding of the 5,000. Now I think we all understand that when Jesus starts to sound a bit like a cannibal here, we understand he’s speaking figuratively of himself. He is eternal; therefore he’ll never dry up; he won’t melt away with the morning dew when the heat of the day beats down on the wilderness. He’ll keep providing continuously.

It’s pretty obvious at this point that Jesus is setting the stage for the Last Supper, which is only a few chapters later in John’s gospel. At that supper, Jesus will take the bread and say, “This is my body.” He’ll take the cup and say, “This is my blood.” That’s the zero hour. The next day, day one if you will, Jesus will have his body beaten and shredded with a cat-of-nine-tails before being hung on a cross and crucified for our sins. On the third day, he rises again and fulfills what he said in John 6: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” He can say this because of the resurrection.

Now a few weeks ago when I took a quick look at the passages for today in the lectionary, I saw this passage and the Ephesians 6 passage. I knew immediately I wanted to preach on Ephesians 6, because that’s my favorite book in the Bible. At first glance, it was difficult to see an immediate connection between these two passages. But as I started to write out my thoughts and analysis of the gospel passage, I began to see more clearly what the connection was, and it comes from Jesus’s words as he walked on the stormy sea: “Take Heart!” It’s easy to say that, but Ephesians 6:10–20 puts meat on the bones of those encouraging words. Listen to the words of Paul:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. [In other words, “Take Heart!”] 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 19 Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. [1]

The world around us is pretty crazy right now. Almost like being in a ship that’s getting tossed around by the waves. But the living bread who came down from heaven has granted us power and authority “in the heavenly realms” to “stand” (Paul says this four times) and stand firm in the power of God that dwells in us by virtue of the Holy Spirit. Peter warns us that “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith.”[2] As we break this down, we’ll see that the armor of God is the armor that God is said to “wear” (as if he needs to wear any) in the Old Testament. It’s not a copy; it’s the armor that belongs to God.

So here we go. The first piece mentioned is the belt of truth. Isaiah says of God in 11:5, “5 Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.”[3] The primary use of the belt in the Old Testament was for holding up your tunic or robe so you could run into battle or run to get help. Having the belt of truth around our waist helps us move more efficiently in the battle. Since they didn’t have “pants” in the OT, we could make the analogy in today’s world that without the belt of truth, some of us might get caught with our pants down!

Jeremiah speaks of a linen belt that God told him to buy in chapter 13 of his prophecy. At first he wears it around his waist as a belt should be worn, and God commands that it should never touch water. But a few days later, God tells him to take the belt and hide it in the crevice in the rocks near the Euphrates river. Several days later, God told him to go dig it up, but by that time, the linen belt was ruined and good for nothing. We’ve been given God’s truth in his word, the Bible, and if we neglect it, if we fail to “gird up our loins” with it, if we fail to proclaim it when we know we should, it has no value to us. Just as God’s truth holds this world and this universe together, so his word in our lives through the Holy Spirit holds us together and helps us to stand firm.

Let’s look at the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation together, because Isaiah speaks of both in the same verse in chapter 59 of his prophecy, a chapter about sin, confession, and redemption, but also about the justice of God, which was so rarely practiced in his day. Hear his words beginning in the last half of vs. 15:

The Lord looked and was displeased

that there was no justice.

16 He saw that there was no one,

he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;

so his own arm achieved salvation for him,

and his own righteousness sustained him.

17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,

and the helmet of salvation on his head;

he put on the garments of vengeance

and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak. [4]

This passage is the transition that Isaiah makes from talking about our life on earth to revealing to his readers what the future will look like from chapter 60 on. The language in those last seven chapters of Isaiah at times reminds us of the Book of Revelation, almost as if John had copied sections verbatim into that final book in the Bible. It’s important to note in this context, God is ready to go on the offense.

The breastplate and the helmet are arguably the two most important pieces of the soldier’s protective gear, because they protect the heart and the head, respectively. The heart is the vault of God’s truth in our spirits; the head is where we experience and recognize God’s presence in our lives and distinguish evil from good. We use our minds to speak God’s healing and encouraging words and to cry out for justice. We use our hearts to love and show compassion for the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden.

You will also notice that Paul mentions “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” in conjunction with the helmet at the end of the description of the heavenly armor. The helmet no doubt has its defensive function, but it, along with the rest of God’s armor, give us the confidence to advance against the gates of hell that Jesus promised would not be able to withstand God’s army of faithful followers (Matthew 16:18). The sword looks back to Isaiah 49:2, where the prophet says, “He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me.” Hide his word in your heart so that when times of trouble come, you can recall it with ease.

Finally, we look at the shoes and the shield. The one who had to gird up his loins and run to spread the news of victory needed a good pair of shoes to make the difficult run to spread good news or to call for more help. Isaiah 52:7 puts it best: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.”

The shield of faith is the final piece of armor to look at. A Roman shield typically had a leather cover, and the soldier would soak it in water for the express purpose having some defense against real flaming arrows the enemy would use to attack. But the shield also had an offensive purpose as well in that if the Roman soldiers stood side-by-side with their shields touching, it made a nearly impenetrable moving wall that could push the enemy back or circle and surround them. Psalm 91, the one about God being our refuge and fortress, says that God’s “faithfulness will be your shield and rampart” (vs. 4).

In the final part of the Ephesians text, Paul uses a “pray” word five times. It’s as if Paul is saying that everything he’s just been encouraging his readers to do in the last three chapters must be undergird with prayer. A few weeks ago, the pastor at my home church had a pretty convicting message about prayer, and it really got to me, especially with all the family stuff we’ve had going on lately. I needed to be more intentional with my prayer life. Needless to say, it’s been amazing. I can’t go into detail, but I started with some small stuff, at least it seemed small to me, but I started to see answers, mostly positive answers, happening more frequently. Prayer connects us to the “heavenly realms” where the spiritual battle is being fought. When we fight on our knees, or for those of us with bad knees, in whatever position, by asking God to meet our needs and heal our loved ones and give hope to the lost, God moves mightily.

So let me close with a prayer for Mount View this morning, because that’s what ties all this together. Lord, open our hearts to welcome those who are seeking hope and healing in this world and the next; open our hands to be a giving and generous congregation that demonstrates the love of God in our service to others; and open the eyes of those around us to see how mightily you are moving in this congregation and in the lives of the faithful who call this home. In Jesus’s name, 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] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My views are my own.

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.

February 4, 2024

Teaching With Authority (Mark 1:21–28)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Ecclesiology,Epifanía,Epiphany,Evangelism,Isaiah,Life of Christ,Liturgical Calendar,Mark Gospel of,Miracles,New Testament,Old Testament,Women in Leadership — Scott Stocking @ 5:44 pm
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I preached this message January 28, 2024, at Mount View Presbyterian Church. It’s based on the Gospel passage for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany in Year B of the Liturgical Calendar.

When was the last time you were in a hurry to finish up a task? Sometimes, we have deadlines to meet and need to ensure everything gets done just right. Those who like working under that kind of pressure may feel like they’re more focused and some extra adrenaline kicks in to help them get the job done quickly. Others may not like being in a hurry so much. They get flustered and may make mistakes or miss important items they need for whatever they’re preparing for.

The Gospel writer Mark gives us the impression that Jesus is the kind of person who was always in a hurry, and he seemed to thrive on the urgency of the situation. Now some of you might say, “Come on, Scott, how could you know Jesus was in a hurry?” Well, I’ll lay it out here for you.

The verses at the beginning of Mark’s gospel set the theme for Mark’s gospel. Listen to Mark 1:3, quoting Isaiah 40:3:

3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.’ ”[1]

The Greek adjective for “straight” means what it says: a straight road unhindered by obstacles, the shortest distance between two points. What is of note for us today is that the adverb form of that verb, often translated “straightaway” or “immediately” in older translations, is used another 41 times in Mark’s gospel, with 10 of those occurrences in Mark’s first chapter alone, and three times in our passage this morning. Mark is letting us know that Jesus is wasting no time in embarking on that straight path, and he has no intention of stopping any time soon.

A quick recap of Mark up to our current passage will help set the stage for talking about Jesus as an authoritative teacher, and how that translates to you and I teaching with authority. Jesus’s cousin John is in the wilderness preaching about the coming of the Messiah when who should show up but Jesus himself. John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan and “immediately” as Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirt visibly descended on Jesus. Mark then gives just a brief statement about Jesus “immediately” going out into the desert and being tempted by Jesus.

After Jesus returns from the desert, he begins preaching a simple message in Galilee, “Repent and believe the good news!” His reputation begins to grow to the point where, in vv. 18 and 20, Simon, Andrew, James, and John all “immediately” leave their fishing boats to follow Jesus. His new followers give him a sense of legitimacy (not that he needed it) in the eyes of the Jews. His “official” ministry had begun.

So now that Jesus has laid the groundwork for his ministry, he returns to his hometown Capernaum, and “immediately” at the next Sabbath synagogue service begins teaching the good news. “Immediately” upon finishing, a man with an unclean spirit cries out that Jesus is the Lord’s Messiah, and Jesus casts out the unclean spirit. In the last verse of our passage today, we see that the end result was that news about what Jesus had done and his teaching with authority “immediately” spread throughout Galilee.

So what does it mean that Jesus “taught with authority”? Aside from being the Son of God and having a direct line to his father, we can be pretty certain that he was a regular at synagogue service growing up, so he’d heard the stories and wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the priest’s or rabbi’s exposition of those scriptures. He grew up in a carpenter’s home (probably not in poverty), so he certainly learned a trade like all other Jewish boys would have, and he had friends that he interacted with. Even as an adolescent, he had already begun to understand and empathize with human condition so that he was no stranger to our sorrows.

The synagogue was also the center for education, at least for males, in the local communities, so Jesus would have likely had a solid education as well, including some Torah training. But he had to bide his time, because 30 was the age a male was considered fully qualified to teach of his own accord in that day.

What Jesus did NOT apparently have in that day was a connection to any of the rabbinic schools who would have trained rabbis to go out to the local synagogues to teach. Nor did he have any letters of recommendation from the Pharisees or Sadducees of his day to further bolster his legitimacy. But that was okay, because he challenged all of those groups to reconsider many of their legalistic interpretations of the Old Testament and, being an outsider, he couldn’t get stripped of any of the privileges or prestige enjoyed by those groups. He was his own man. He knew what his father wanted of him, and he knew how to get there.

In those days, it was important for a teacher to have both an aura of authority and a group of followers. Without followers, people would not give him a second look as teacher; they’d think he and his message were irrelevant. And without authority, especially the authority of his miracles, it would have been easy to dismiss him as a phony and charlatan.

The difficult part of that combination is maintaining authority, because this was a huge barometer in a culture built on the principles of honor and shame. You’ve probably noticed in the Gospels that when someone tried to challenge Jesus’s authority or trap him in his words, he has a couple different ways he responds. With the average person, he tends to be more compassionate and sympathetic with his response. He knows what kind of religious legalism they live under and how that makes them feel inferior.

We see this especially in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus starts with the Beatitudes and transitions to challenging the “authorized” teaching of his day. “You have heard it said that,…but I say to you….” This is speech seasoned with salt, if you will, speaking the truth in love and compassion.

With most of the Pharisees and Sadducees, however, it’s a completely different attitude. At times he comes across as downright snarky and perhaps even a little belligerent, at least from our own perspective, when he challenges their legalistic platitudes and nitpicky “requirements” they claim to discern from God’s law. Why did Jesus, whom so many see as a man of peace, respond in this way to the religious leaders?

In a culture of honor and shame, if someone challenged your authority or demonstrated apparent hypocrisy in your teachings and you couldn’t defend yourself against those charges, that usually meant you were done for as a teacher or as an advocate for whatever it was you were promoting. Jesus knew that, of course, so when he responded, he made sure that he not only got his point across but that he also destroyed the argument of those challenging him. After all, he was calling people to follow him, so he needed a compelling reason for them to abandon their current teacher if they weren’t on the up-and-up and a compelling reason to follow him instead.

Jesus employed not just words and wisdom in his teaching, in his defense of his ministry, and in his rebuttals against the religious leaders of the day, but wonders and miracles as well to back up his authoritative words. Like the famous baseball player Dizzy Dean said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it!”

We see, then, that Jesus’s authority as a teacher comes not only from being the Son of God, something that was not necessarily obvious to anyone who saw him, but also from the wisdom and knowledge he gained from a human perspective and his ability win over followers. But being the Son of God, he had an advantage that you and I typically don’t have when it comes to authority. He could do the miracles.

So how does that impact us today as we live out the witness of our faith and teach others about the Word of God? If you’ll remember when I was here a few Sundays ago, I said that Epiphany was a time for us to introduce people to Jesus. How can we do so with conviction and authority as the body of Christ?

One of the first things I heard about Bible colleges when I went to seminary after getting a degree from UNO was that, for all intents and purposes, a Bible college education was essentially equivalent to having grown up going to Sunday school every week and paying attention along the way. You and I are long past our Sunday school days now, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t learn from the Word of God. Regular study of God’s word, individually and collectively in groups, will always help us “be prepared in season and out of season”[2] to share the hope and encouragement of the Gospel.

I don’t know of any Bible colleges, seminaries, or churches in general who require preachers or members who want to join to fast for 40 days and nights as Jesus did! But there is value in practicing such spiritual disciplines as fasting for a short period, as you are able,[3] and prayer. Such disciplines, when done regularly, give you the spiritual “muscle memory” to develop a Christlike mind set and worldview. You will find that not only will you recognize God’s voice more clearly than ever, but that deciding to do the right thing or avoiding the bad thing will become a more natural choice for you.

You and I may never do anything close to what Jesus did when it comes to miracles, but believe or not, Jesus did give us a means of working miracles in the lives of others. It’s a little verse that says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Of all the ways people turn their lives around when coming to faith in Jesus, I can say with great certainty that it’s not just our words but how we made others feel. You’ve heard the saying: “I may not remember what you said, but I remember how you made me feel.”

One of the best stories in the Bible that makes this point is the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8. The religious leaders had brought her into the temple courts and stood her up before the crowd Jesus was teaching to. They were adamant that the woman must be stoned to death for her sin. Jesus takes his time to answer. John says Jesus bends down to write something on the ground, what we don’t know. Then Jesus stands up and says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.[4]” Then Jesus bends down again and continues writing. That was it. Jesus won. With one simple statement, he destroyed the logic behind the action the religious leaders wanted to take and telegraphed a clear message of compassion and forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery. I’m sure those religious leaders never forgot how Jesus humbled them, and some of them may have genuinely had a lasting change of heart. The woman, of course, was relieved that she was spared from the stoning, but Jesus was clear that she should not continue in her life of sin. She seems to have had a change in heart as well, as we see here later on in the gospel story. That’s the miracle of love and speaking the truth in love.

Finally, your ability and authority to teach has nothing to do with any of your innate biological makeup. The New Testament is clear, when read in the proper cultural and biblical context, that men and women could and did have teaching responsibilities in the early church. I don’t believe anything has changed in 2,000 years of church history to overturn that precedence, in spite of what some have proposed at times. I have studied this quite thoroughly and have written about it elsewhere if you’re interested. (Qualifications of Male and Female Leaders in the Church (1 Timothy); The Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians as Background for Understanding 1 Timothy 2)

We can have confidence to speak and teach the Word of God with authority as we invite people to church and introduce people to Jesus. As you go out the doors this morning, the world is your mission field. Let’s let the world know that Jesus lives and reigns in our hearts. Amen.

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

[2] 2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV).

[3] Disclaimer: Please consult with a medical professional to ensure this would be appropriate for your health situation.

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

December 31, 2023

Praising the Savior (Luke 2:22–40)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Christology,Christology,Epifanía,Epiphany,Hebrews,Isaiah,Luke Gospel of,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 3:51 pm
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I preached this sermon at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on December 31, 2023, the First Sunday After Christmas on the liturgical calendar year B. I was on the back end of a cold, so I sound a little different.

Last Sunday, Christmas Eve, I had the privilege of baptizing my half-sister at my home church. Thirty-three years and day before that, December 23, 1990, I had been present at her dedication and baptism at the Lutheran church on N. 30th Street. My dad and her mom wanted me to be her “sponsor” or “Godfather.” It was a distinct honor to come full circle like that on a commitment I quite frankly had little influence on in her early life because I lived 500 miles away.

Lindee’s story parallels my own faith journey as I’ve shared with you in past, but our stories both parallel the life of Jesus in this regard as well, and we see the first part of that story in our passage today. Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple to go through the Jewish purification rites. Mary had to wait 40 days to be purified from giving birth, which as we all know involves some blood. But because Jesus was also a firstborn son, he had to be dedicated to the service of the Lord as the Israelites were commanded in Exodus. That involved a sacrifice as well, as we see in the final “plague” of the Exodus. And of course we know that Jesus was baptized as an adult “to fulfill all righteousness,” as Matthew records. The Western church recognizes that event the day after Epiphany next week.[1]

Now when you and I dedicate ourselves to raising our children in the Lord, whatever that looks like from your perspective, I would venture to guess none of us has any idea what our kids are going to be like some thirty years later. But Mary and Joseph encountered two people in the Temple that day of Jesus’s consecration who seemed to know quite a bit about what Jesus would be doing thirty years later.

Simeon’s prophecy about Jesus is both encouraging and haunting. On the one hand, he is saying that Jesus is the light to the Gentiles Isaiah spoke of in Chapter 9 of his prophecy. But then it takes a darker turn, speaking of the rising and falling of many and that he would be a sign spoken against. The final part of his prophecy to Mary is the most haunting of all: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” That little word “too” at the end of the prophecy reveals that Jesus is destined for incredible suffering at some point in the future, which we now know was the cross. Mary witnessed that event as well, so you can imagine the pain she must have felt.

Anna also had what at least on the surface appears to be an encouraging prophecy as well, giving thanks to God, but she mentions the redemption of Jerusalem. Now I know we may tend to throw around these $20 religious words like “salvation” and “redemption” without thinking more deeply about what they imply, but the Jews would have understood from their sacrificial system that “salvation” and “redemption” both required blood sacrifices in the Old Testament. So even as Simeon and Anna spoke over the infant Jesus, their words prefigured in some way, subtle or not, that Jesus would suffer death at some point.

It’s hard to say what the son of God knew or understood as an infant when he heard these words. His human side would not have understood them, but his divine nature surely would have, and how those two natures worked together will perhaps forever be a beautiful mystery to us. But the text in Luke goes on to say that Jesus’s parents took Jesus to the Passover every year in Jerusalem, so Jesus, as he grew older, began to understand that the Temple wasn’t just a place of worship, but his own spiritual home, because the Temple was his Father’s house.

It’s a fair extrapolation, I think, to assume that Jesus and his family were regulars in the local synagogue as well when they weren’t in Jerusalem for the Passover. Luke gives us just a glimpse of Jesus as a preteen with the story of him staying behind to school the teachers of the law in the Temple courts. Now if he was doing that with the teachers in the Temple, can you imagine what he must have been like in the local synagogue? We don’t see Jesus begin his ministry until he was thirty years old, but what was he like as a young adult? Did he give the synagogue leader some pointers after each message? Surely he didn’t live in isolation as a young man. Were the women oohing and aahing about his theological prowess? I’m guessing not. He was probably a Nazarite like Samson, except he knew how to behave himself, which is why we never read about him getting married. He was off limits to women, because he was laser-focused on preparing for his ministry as the Messiah.

All of what I’ve said up to this point is more or less an intellectual exercise, examining the history and background around the birth and dedication of Jesus and the times he lived in. But what are some takeaways for us? What are some things we can do to help our kids and grandkids raise their own kids so they can take ownership of their faith and understand God’s purposes for them in this day and age?

The most obvious takeaway for us is the importance of gathering with God’s people in God’s house. For the Jews, that was primarily the local synagogue, with the Temple being a special destination, one to three times a year depending on how often people could make the journey. For us Christians, we really don’t have anything akin to the Temple, so it’s the local church that’s important.

I’ve often had people tell me, and perhaps you’ve experienced this as well, that you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. I would beg to differ. As believers, we are part of the body of Christ; we may be set apart from the world in God’s eyes, but we are not set apart from our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are united essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally in God’s eyes through Christ. Wherever God has a child, we have a sibling in Christ. Hebrews 10:24 and 25 puts it this way:

24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.[2]

Most of us who have grown up in the church recognize this distinctly. We recognize the power of connection and the shared purpose and goals that develop from such a connection. The local church is not just a place where we come to be uplifted and encouraged, but where we can also uplift and encourage others. It is a community with bonds that are not easily broken.

Related to this is the idea of service. Some churches have signs above the doors that exit out of their sanctuaries that say, “You are now entering the mission field.” In Acts 6, we see the apostles were concerned about the Hellenistic Jewish widows who were being overlooked in the distribution of food. They gathered everyone together and quickly worked out a solution and appointed capable people to handle that specific ministry. That couldn’t have happened if everyone was doing their own thing.

Another takeaway for us comes from the responses of Simeon and Anna. Granted, they had some prophetic insight into who the baby Jesus was and how he fit into God’s plan for salvation and redemption, but we now have the hindsight to know exactly what that looked like. Just as Simeon and Anna praised God for who he is and what he was doing through Jesus, so to can we praise God for who he is, what he has done for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and what he is doing in us through the work of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Our reading from Psalm 148 gives us some hints about how we can praise God:

11 kings of the earth and all nations,

you princes and all rulers on earth,

12 young men and women,

old men and children.

13 Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for his name alone is exalted;

his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. [3]

Like attending church, praise is not just an individual effort we make to show our gratitude to God. Praise also flows from our experience together as a community, especially as we see the fruit of our mutual and collective labors. It also flows from reading and hearing about God’s great works in the service. Psalm 148 also has several references to God’s wonderful creation that is available to all mankind, not just to those of us who believe.

One final thought about Luke’s passage here: Simeon especially indicates that following Jesus is going to cause people to take sides. We see more and more in our world today the antagonism toward the good news of Jesus. This is all the more reason for us to maintain community on the one hand, so there’s strength in numbers. But also we can take a unified stand for righteousness and truth and send a powerful message of unity and steadfastness to the world.

As we look forward to the new year, then, let us resolve and recommit ourselves to serving and praising God and meeting together as body of believers to carry out the various ministries he’s called us to. Together, we can be shining lights in a world of darkness, a beacon of hope amidst the signs of fear and despair. Amen.

[1] I removed the following because I didn’t want the sermon to get too long, and I didn’t want to dive into the topic of adult baptism with an older congregation.

But the parallel doesn’t stop there. I think most of us recognize that next week is Epiphany, where the Western church celebrates the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. But how many of you know that the day after Epiphany is the recognition of Jesus’s baptism by John? Even though John knew he needed to be baptized by Jesus, and even though Jesus knew he was the son of God and sinless and had no need to “repent and be baptized” as John was preaching, still Matthew records Jesus’s desire that he be baptized “to fulfill all righteousness.”

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

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

March 12, 2023

A Woman, a Well, and Worshipping God (John 4; Romans 5:1–11)

Filed under: "I Am" Statements,Biblical Studies,Christology,Courage,Ecclesiology,Isaiah,John Gospel of,Life of Christ,Old Testament,Romans,Soteriology,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 8:53 pm
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I preached this message on March 12, 2023, Third Sunday in Lent, at Mt. View Presbyterian Church. The Gospel text was pretty much the entire chapter of John 4, so instead of reading all that, I showed a clip from The Chosen, Season 1, Episode 8, where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. 03/08/26 update: I repurposed this message for this morning’s message and remembered to record the message this time, so I’ve attached it above.

Someone might think John was trying to create scandal from the very first words of his Gospel. In the first couple verses, he claims Jesus is God and was present at creation. The Jewish leaders would have considered that blasphemy. John the Baptizer, who is NOT the same John who wrote this gospel, goes on to claim he is the one sent to prepare the way for the Messiah, and upon Jesus’s baptism, John declares him to be the Son of God.

Then, instead of picking the leading religious rulers of his day, Jesus chooses a few fishermen and other average, everyday men to be in his band of disciples. After that, instead of his first miracle being a healing or exorcism, he decides to make about 180 gallons of premium wine so the party can keep going at the wedding. Then John throws in a story about Jesus cleansing the temple of the money changers and about how he’ll be able to rebuild the temple in three days if it’s destroyed. In John 3, he declares that belief in him ensures eternal life. Again, probably grounds for blasphemy if he were just an ordinary man.

And so we come to John chapter 4, and the scandalous behavior continues. How dare he travel through Samaria! His disciples would have rather walked the extra distance around Samaria rather than soil their sandals with the dust of that land. How dare he talk to a Samaritan woman, let alone ask her for a drink from Jacob’s well, especially when the rest of his followers aren’t around. Don’t you know, Jesus, that we’re not supposed to even touch the Samaritans let alone eat and drink with them?

Many of you know that the Gospel of John is unique in that it has many stories about Jesus’s ministry that are not reflected in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Many think that John may have organized his Gospel theologically rather than chronologically. For example, the story of Jesus clearing the temple, which is found in chapter 2 of John’s gospel, is placed in the last week of Jesus’s ministry. It’s not clear whether this is the same story, or if there were two different episodes when Jesus cleared the temple.

Jesus is in the land of his ancestors, so it seems fitting, at least to John, that Jesus would want to reveal himself first to his ancestors.

For the sake of argument, then, I’m going to assume there’s a theological message John is trying to get across here: He establishes Jesus is fully divine and that God is his Father. Since he’s God’s “only begotten” on Earth, Jesus then is the primary authority in the Temple, which the Jews believed was home of God’s presence. Finally, Jesus, having been established as the authority for the Jewish religion, essentially abolishes the long-standing prejudice against Samaria by going to the place where his ancestor Judah’s father, Jacob (renamed Israel) first established himself in the Promised Land after returning from Laban’s home. I think this aspect of the story lends to its credibility and to the principle of worship he puts forth.

One of the most important things to note about this encounter with the woman is that Jesus actually takes the time to have a real conversation with the woman, although he slowly reveals that he knows more about her than she thinks he knows. Jesus is in the land of his ancestors, so it seems fitting, at least to John, that Jesus would want to reveal himself first to his ancestors. That would be like me going to the Stocking Township, named after my great, great, great grandfather in the Wahoo area, or perhaps even to the historic site of the 12th-century Stocking Abbey in England, where my ancestors likely came from and ministering to a congregation in either of those places.

So what can we learn from the encounter between Jesus and this woman? The first thing is that Jesus did not recognize the ethnic boundaries that existed in his day and age. The Samaritans followed only the Torah, the five books of Moses, but not the prophets who came later. So they were a people who had deep Jewish roots, but because the Northern Kingdom had been conquered within a couple generations of rise of the prophets and the prohibition against intermarriage had been abandoned, they had little connection to the prophets and they were no longer considered “pure” Jews. The Jews considered them unclean. That didn’t matter to Jesus, though. He wanted the Samaritans to know that a “prophet” had returned to the area after some 700 years,

Because the Jews considered Samaritans unclean, they weren’t permitted to eat or drink from any of any of their plates or vessels. And the fact that she was divorced several times, well beyond what Jewish law would have permitted to remain in good standing, added to her social stigma among her own people not to mention the Jews. This is another barrier that Jesus would shatter: that it was okay to eat and drink with “sinners” and other outcasts like tax collectors.

The other New Testament text from today’s lectionary reading is Romans 5:1–11. Verses 6–8 say this:

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[1]

Did you catch that? This is really important to understand. When we cry out to God for help, does he say “Quit your womanizing! Quit lying! Quit getting drunk! Then you can come to me and I’ll consider your request?” By no means! That passage doesn’t say Christ died for those who’ve cleaned up their lives first. It says Christ died for the ungodly, while we were still sinners! That sounds like we can have a great weight lifted from us so we can see more hope and more light at the end of whatever dark tunnel sin has led us through. God loves us even before we realize that his love is the greatest gift of all, even when we think we may not be worthy of it. That’s grace!

The offer of “living water” is the centerpiece of the story. Parts of this story hearken back to Isaiah 49:6 and 10, a prophecy about the Servant of the Lord and the restoration of Israel:

5 And now the Lord says—

he who formed me in the womb to be his servant

to bring Jacob back to him

and gather Israel to himself,

for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord

and my God has been my strength—

6 he says:

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant

to restore the tribes of Jacob

and bring back those of Israel I have kept.

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

…

10 They will neither hunger nor thirst,

nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.

He who has compassion on them will guide them

and lead them beside springs of water. [2]

This woman seems to have been suffering for some time because she felt like she needed to draw water in the heat of the day. We don’t know very much about her personal life aside from the divorces; no indication she had any children or what her current relationship was like. This leads us to another principle at play here: Don’t be afraid to speak to someone about whatever it is in their life that is holding them back from a full and vibrant relationship with God. Now Jesus had some special knowledge of her situation here, so he holds the advantage, but it’s for her benefit ultimately. Once he discloses what he knows about her marital status, she understands not only that Jesus is a prophet, but she also believes his claim that he is the Messiah and shared that convincingly with many people in her town.

Don’t be afraid to speak to someone about whatever it is in their life that is holding them back from a full and vibrant relationship with God.

Jeremiah mentions a couple times (2:13; 17:13) about how his listeners have “forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.” But Zechariah, when prophesying about the second coming of Christ and the consummation of history, says this in 14:8:

On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter.

9 The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.[3]

This is the ultimate and absolute promise of fulfillment we can look forward to when we humble ourselves before God and accept his free gifts of reconciliation and salvation. God will be in total control. No more crying, pain, or grief, just living eternally in the glory of God’s light.

Turning back to Romans 5 for a moment, Paul describes what happens when we come into that justification, and the woman seems to have experienced that, especially with respect to addressing the own suffering she had experienced for so long. Listen to verses 1–5:

Therefore, since we have been justified through the faithfulness [of Christ], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by his faithfulness into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. [4]

The final takeaway from this passage is how Jesus is overturning the traditions (and exclusions) about worship. The woman was upset about how the Jews thought the Temple in Jerusalem was the only place you could really worship God. In fact, it seems like she’s trying to use that to get out of talking about her marital history. But Jesus assures her that a new way of worship has arrived. The place no longer matters; what matters is expressing her true feelings and emotions from her heart, soul, and mind to praise God for all he’s done for her. It’s that joy that causes her to leave her water jars behind and hurry back to her people proclaiming, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”[5]

John notes that the woman at the well was responsible, by virtue of her testimony, for many in her town believing, and they had that testimony confirmed by Jesus himself, because he stayed there a few days preaching and teaching. They knew the joy of personal justification and reconciliation with God. They also found the hope of eternal life as well. Listen to Romans 5:9–11:

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.[6]

My prayer for you this Lenten and Easter season is that you know the salvation of God and receive it with joy just as the woman at the well did. Let us hold fast to our faith and hope and continue to reach out to those who need to experience God’s love, forgiveness, compassion and grace. 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] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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

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

March 4, 2023

Life Lessons From a Year Through the Lectionary (Isaiah 58–61)

Filed under: Advent,Adviento,Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Christology,Christology,Chronology,Easter,Ecclesiology,Epifanía,Epiphany,Isaiah,Lent,Life of Christ,Liturgical Calendar,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,New Testament,Old Testament,Passion,Temptation — Scott Stocking @ 10:14 pm
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Background

I’m in the midst of a few weeks off from preaching, so I’ve had some time to reflect on the past 14 months of preaching through the Lectionary/Liturgical Calendar[1] at the behest of my childhood home church, Mt. View Presbyterian in Omaha. At the beginning of 2022, they had asked me to follow the Revised Common Lectionary, because that makes it easy for their small church to plan out bulletins and coordinate with other guest preachers.

It’s kind of like being back in seminary, having a different assignment due every two weeks or so, and because I’m not afraid of any challenge when it comes to preaching the Bible, I wholeheartedly agreed. I will admit as well that it’s beneficial to me, because I don’t have to think about topics in advance. Lincoln (IL) Christian Seminary taught me some great skills when it comes to hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) and homiletics (the skills for preaching), so I already know how to go through the motions to prepare.

Although I was raised in the Presbyterian faith and went through my church’s confirmation process, not much of that stuck as a sixth grader (or however old I was at the time). By the time I got to high school, I had begun to form my own ideas about my faith, and I started to look for something that was grounded more directly in Scripture and less reliant on the “traditions of men.” I found that home in the Restoration Movement (independent Christian Church) when I went to college.

The Restoration Movement traces its roots to the frontier Midwest (Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio areas) where a group of preachers decided the best way to “do” church was to primarily stick to what the Bible said and not make manmade creeds or religious rules a test of faith or fidelity. “No creed but Christ; no book but the Bible”; “Where Scripture speaks, we speak; where they are silent there’s freedom” or “we’re silent.” Accordingly, things like the Liturgical Calendar or traditional Holy Days were downplayed, unless there was biblical precedent (e.g., the birth of Christ announced by angels). Historically, we’ve operated under the principle that the operations of God’s grace are not dictated by the Liturgical Calendar or any other calendar.

The operations of God’s grace are not dictated by the Liturgical Calendar or any other calendar.

While I still generally operate under that principle, I have come to discover the biblical underpinnings of many of the Holy Days or Seasons. In addition to that, I have come to see how important some of these traditions are to the Mt. View congregation as currently constituted. I have been refreshed and uplifted in my faith in God and my knowledge of his word by the work I’ve had to do to prepare messages based on the Lectionary readings for a particular Sunday. As such, I want to take the opportunity of this article to share what I’ve discovered about some of the lesser-known Holy Days and Seasons, at least among those in the Restoration Movement tradition, and perhaps encourage my brothers and sisters in the Restoration Movement to consider a more intentional approach to them.

Advent: Preparing for the Coming Messiah

As with most things, it’s best to start at the beginning, so I want to take a look at Advent first. The Lectionary cycles through three years (Years A, B, and C) of readings, and Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical year.[2] As you might imagine, Advent is the most familiar to me. I have fond memories of getting the Advent calendars with chocolate or other goodies in them (maybe even a Bible verse?) and especially of lighting the Advent candles in church service with my family. I know our family got to do it at least one Advent Sunday when I was growing up.

What I had forgotten was that each Sunday in Advent had its own special theme. This may vary among the traditions, but the four common themes are usually Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. For Advent 2022 (Year A of the new cycle), the OT passages focused on Isaiah.[3] What I find interesting is that many of these passages could have dual fulfillment, referring both to the first coming of the Messiah and the second coming of the Messiah. For example, Isaiah 2:3 (Year A, first Sunday) mentions going to the temple where God will teach his ways, while 2:4 speaks of beating swords into plowshares, which is typically associated with the second coming.

Isaiah 11:1–2 (second Sunday) speaks of Jesus as the one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest, while 11:4 says “He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.” Isaiah 35 (third Sunday) appears to reference much of Jesus’s healing ministry, but vs. 4 speaks God coming with vengeance. Isaiah 7:14 (fourth Sunday) is the prophecy Matthew quotes about the virgin birth of Christ, even though it has a partial fulfillment in the immediate chapters of Isaiah following that. Isaiah 9 (“For unto us a Child is born”) is the annual passage for Christmas Eve service.

It’s easy to see, then, why many of the Jews at the time of Jesus’s ministry were looking for a Messiah that would overthrow Roman rule. This led me to an important realization: God’s people have never lived in a time where they had no expectation of a coming Messiah, except perhaps for those who were close to the Messiah during his earthly ministry. Even though scholars are fairly certain that Jesus was not born in the month of December, the celebration of Advent along with Christmas not only as a retrospective on Jesus’s birth and first coming and all the heavenly fanfare that went along with that, but also as a prospective look at the second coming of Christ is still highly relevant to Christians today, especially in our current culture and climate.

God’s people have never lived in a time where they had no expectation of a coming Messiah.

Epiphany

I recently posted my Epiphany message, A Pastor’s Epiphany About Epiphany (Matthew 2:1–12; Isaiah 60:1–6; Psalm 72), so I won’t say too much about that here. The title pretty much sums it up. Epiphany focuses on the visit of the magi to Jesus, which, if you read the Gospel account closely, seems to come a few days after the birth of Christ (historically 12 days after, but there’s no biblical text to suggest that time frame); Jesus’s family was in a house by that time. Focusing on the Isaiah passage here, which is the same every year in the Lectionary, reveals some interesting clues to where the magi came from.

As I was preparing the Epiphany message, I realized that I’d never really heard anyone in the Restoration Movement talk about where these magi had come from. That seemed pretty odd to me given that we’re supposed to focus on examining the Scriptures to figure out the truth. I’d heard about David Longnecker’s Mystery of the Magi in a news report. The book gives a detailed analysis of where these magi may have lived and what their connection was to Jewish history and prophecy. As it turns out, these magi were probably not from Persia, because Persia was in decline at the time. Rather, they were probably from some diaspora Jews that never made it to Babylon and settled in communities east of the Jordan river and Dead Sea, and perhaps as far south as Midian. They were known as Nabateans. They would have had a more intimate knowledge of Messianic prophecy and seem to fit the demographic and economic descriptions in the Isaiah 60 passage, as I explain in my message. Isaiah 60:1 may refer to the star they followed; they were at the crossroads of several prominent trade routes; and “Nebaioth” is mentioned, which may well be the root of the name of the Nabateans.

If there’s any application to this knowledge, I think it’s that we need to learn to recognize the signs of the times to anticipate the second coming of Christ, which ties in to the secondary theme of Advent. The Nabateans appear to have been diligently searching the skies and paying attention to the signs, because they did not want to miss the coming of the Messiah they had hoped for as well.

“Jesus would probably laugh at us for giving up things like chocolate, beer, coffee…all the things that actually bring us joy and make us happy.”

Lent

In the past couple weeks since Lent began, I’ve had one friend ask whether I observe Ash Wednesday, and another ask me what I thought about a Facebook post about one person’s unique take on Lent. Here’s a quote cited in the post from a priest he’d heard:

“Jesus would probably laugh at us for giving up things like chocolate, beer, coffee…all the things that actually bring us joy and make us happy.

What He might suggest is giving up the things that make us miserable in God’s Paradise.

Things like self doubt, insecurities, jealousy, greed, and gossip and anger.

The things that move us away from The Light.

Honor His sacrifice by giving up The Darkness in your Life.”

Now I’ve never given up anything for Lent, because I don’t observe it. And I’ve never had ashes placed on my forehead to initiate a Lenten fast. But I thought what this priest he’s quoting said made a lot of sense. But here’s where my initial principle comes into play: the operation of God’s grace isn’t limited to a calendar or a season. Shouldn’t we always be giving up the darkness in our lives so we can more fully know God? That’s a good way to live to be sure, and I commend anyone who can do that, but if it’s something we should give up permanently, then is it really a fast? Is it really a sacrifice to give up something that’s bad for us?

Before I even looked at the Lectionary for what passage is assigned for Lent, I knew Isaiah 58 was really the best definition of fasting we have in the Bible. As it turns out, that is the evergreen passage for Lent. The problem as I see it with concept of Lent as a personal fast is that it is somewhat self-centered. Sure, the presumed motivation is to get closer to God, but how does giving up a food item or certain activity actually accomplish that? And again, if it’s something that you know is bad for you anyway, why do you need the backdrop of a religious Holy Season to accomplish it?

If we look at Isaiah’s description of fasting, though, there’s really nothing selfish about how it should be. There’s no talk of personal sacrifice or personal wellbeing. In fact, Isaiah (58:5) scolds his readers for thinking of fasting in just such a way:

5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,

only a day for people to humble themselves?

Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed

and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast,

a day acceptable to the Lord?[4]

Isaiah then goes on to describe what the Lord expects from our fasting, and there’s nothing selfish about it, except that when we do the hard things, then we have a reward waiting for us. What are the hard things (vv. 6–7, 9b–10a)?

  • Loose the chains of injustice
  • Untie the cords of the yoke
  • Set the oppressed free and satisfy their needs
  • Break every yoke
  • Share your food with the hungry by spending yourself on their behalf
  • Provide the poor wanderer with shelter
  • Clothe the naked
  • Not turn away from our own flesh and blood
  • Do away with the blame game and malicious talk

What are the resulting rewards? They’re commensurate with the degree to which we work toward accomplishing the hard stuff! This isn’t legalism, though. This is what it means to show our faith by what we do, not just by what we say. We talk the talk AND walk the walk. Integrity.

  • Your light will break forth like the dawn
  • Your healing will appear quickly
  • Your righteousness will go before you
  • The glory of the LORD will be your rear guard
  • You will call, and the LORD will answer
  • You will cry for help, and he will be there for you
  • Your light will rise in the darkness, like the noonday sun
  • The LORD will always guide you, satisfy you, and strengthen you.

And so on and so on and so on.

In the Old Testament, most references to fasting are about a community fasting, not individuals. When it occurs in the books of pre-exilic history, it often refers to a prebattle ritual. David fasted for his first child with Bathsheba, but to no avail. In the post-exilic history, fasting is mentioned in connection with restoring Jerusalem to a semblance of its pre-exilic state (e.g., compare Isaiah 58:12 to Isaiah 61:4). In the New Testament, most references to fasting are about what to do when you fast. There’s very little mention of its purpose, although the reference to John’s disciples fasting most likely indicates they were waiting for the Messiah.

In the Old Testament, most references to fasting are about a community fasting, not individuals.

Above, I made a parenthetical reference to Isaiah 61 with respect to rebuilding ancient ruins. Nehemiah fasted before taking on the project to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. But do you know what else is significant about Isaiah 61? That is the passage Jesus uses for his own ministry in Luke’s account, immediately after Jesus spends 40 days fasting in the wilderness. His words sound very much like the purpose of fasting in Isaiah 58. Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness because he knew he had big things, Isaiah 58 big things, to accomplish in his ministry, so he did it right. Check out Isaiah 61:1–3a and see if that doesn’t sound a lot like Isaiah 58:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3           and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of joy instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.[5]

So fasting is for the big things; the big decisions. The Gospels do hint that fasting had taken on a more individual application in some cases, but I don’t think its purpose, as outlined in Isaiah 58, was ever diminished. Jesus set the standard for fasting. Another interesting aspect of fasting in the NT: it’s never mentioned after Acts, and only twice in Acts 13:2–3 around a decision about whom to send out to the Gentiles.

The application for the modern church seems clear, then. While there does seem to be something to be gained by fasting personally, the more important goal the Scriptures (and Jesus) have in fasting is justice, especially for the poor and oppressed. The Scriptures also seem clear, both in the OT and especially with John’s disciples in the NT, that corporate fasting is much more powerful and effective in God’s kingdom economy.

Conclusion (for now)

This post is already pretty long, so I’ll forego discussing Easter through Passover, which makes up the last of the Holy Seasons in the Liturgical Calendar. The rest of the Sundays in the Liturgical Calendar after Passover are identified as “Propers,” 29 of them for the remainder of 2023. That seems kind of unusual to me to have the major church Holy Days packed into five months of the year. Do we need 22 weeks a year to get ready for the other 30 weeks? Is the liturgical year intended to be a microcosm of the Christian life: we educate ourselves about who Christ is and what he’s done for us early on so that we can walk faithfully for the rest of our lives?

I’d love to hear your stories about how these Holy Days or Holy Seasons have impacted you. As I said before, I’d never really given them much thought until this last year, so I’ve tried to look at them from an outsider’s perspective, since I have little to no historical experience with these things. I do hope my brothers and sisters in the Restoration Movement will consider my words here and how they can present these Holy Days and Seasons in a fresh new way to reach those who may have lost their way for whatever reasons. I think the body of Christ will benefit greatly if we can discover a new appreciation for the Liturgical Calendar.

My opinions are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

[1] The Liturgical Calendar is the order of the Holy Days and Seasons. The Lectionary represents the assigned Scripture texts for each day that are used in the worship service or as the basis for the message on any given day of the Liturgical Calendar. My focus here is primarily on those events that happen on Sundays.

[2] The new liturgical year formally begins on the Thursday before the first Sunday in Advent. This is usually the last Thursday of November, so this is typically Thanksgiving Day, unless November has five Thursdays.

[3] For some Holy Days, the passages are different from year to year in the cycle, but are the same in the respective years of each cycle. So year A has the same passages for Advent in 2019, 2022, 2025, etc.; Year B for 2020, 2023, 2026, etc.. For other Holy Days, Epiphany and Lent, for example, the passages are the same for all three years in the cycle and thus across all cycles.

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

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

February 27, 2023

A Pastor’s Epiphany About Epiphany (Matthew 2:1–12; Isaiah 60:1–6; Psalm 72)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Christology,Ecclesiology,Epifanía,Epiphany,Isaiah,Liturgical Calendar,Matthew Gospel of,Psalms,Theophany — Scott Stocking @ 5:56 pm
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Click Play above to hear the message.

I preached this message on January 8, 2023, the first Sunday after Epiphany (January 6), at Mt. View Presbyterian Church in Omaha. As I say in my message, I had never really given much thought to this “Holy Day,” because the brotherhood I’m associated with today doesn’t typically do anything special with any Holy Days except Christmas and Easter. There may be a divine component as to why I’m posting this almost two months after preaching the message. I was recently drawn into a couple conversations on Lent and Ash Wednesday by friends who are from a Catholic and another mainline Protestant tradition, respectively, and together, the Holy Spirit has been using these experiences to prompt me to take a fresh look at these Holy Days that I had dismissed out-of-hand as traditions of man. Look for another blog post soon on what my thought process has been in that regard. The message is lightly edited for publication.

Historical Background

Epiphany. As English words go, it’s kind of a funny sounding word, don’t you think? When I hear that “piff” sound in the word, it reminds me of the sound I make when I think something is too easy for me. For those outside of mainline denominations, if they know the word at all, it probably doesn’t have any sort of religious or Christian meaning for them: when someone says, “I had an epiphany,” they’re not talking about a cheeseburger from Dinker’s, although that could be a close comparison for burger lovers. Anybody hungry now? In that sense of the word, an epiphany moment is when you see the light, discover your purpose, or understand clearly what action you must take to set your life on a better and more prosperous path.

But for those of us in the Western church, the “Epiphany,” theeeee “Epiphany” is not just some moment you have internally, but it’s a series of events surrounding one person, Jesus Christ, that has impact on the whole human race eternally. It is the short period of time surrounding the birth of Jesus where not only is he revealed as God’s Messiah to the shepherds in the fields, but also to the Magi from the East, wherever that may have been. Now when we were kids and did the Christmas nativity scene in the front of the sanctuary, the Magi were always there with the shepherds. Did you notice in Matthew’s text where the Magi encountered Jesus: it wasn’t in the manger; it was in a house! More on that later. First, I want to look a little bit at the word itself.

Now as I’ve grown and matured as a Christian and a preacher, I’ve come to adopt the view that I should call Bible things by Bible names, where practical, so that when I talk about something biblical, I can point to the Bible and say: “Here it is.” But sometimes we use words that aren’t in the Bible, at least, not in our English translations, to summarize biblical concepts. “Trinity” is one of those words that isn’t in the Bible, but the Bible is pretty clear about the triune relationship among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Word Study on ἐπιφαίνω (epiphainō)

Similarly, the word “Epiphany” is not found in the text of our English translations, but the word is simply borrowed from a family of words we have in the Greek version of the Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is an intensified form of a word that means “appear” or “make known.” Half of its uses in the OT Greek text are found in the phrase “make your face shine upon us” (Numbers 6:25 and several passages in the Psalms), and a few other uses refer to God revealing himself to someone.

In the NT, the noun is used 5 times in 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus to refer to either the first or second “appearing” of the Savior. The verb is used by Zechariah in his song of praise in Luke 1 to refer to Mary’s child as “the rising sun [who] will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness.” It’s also used twice in Titus to refer to “the grace of God” and “the kindness and love of God our Savior” appearing.

Now the thing that makes this an “intensified” word, that is, to use the Greek, an EPIphainō and not just a phainō, is the nature of what was revealed. This is where the Magi come in. Historically, according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, the term was first used of a church feast on January 6 in the Eastern church in the third century, and originally focused on the baptism of Jesus, where the Holy Spirit descended like a dove on him and God said, “This is my beloved Son, with him I am well pleased.” To this day, the Eastern Orthodox church still focuses on the baptism of Christ on Epiphany. However, when the Western church adopted the Holy Day, they switched the focus to the visit of the Magi, whose gifts revealed that Jesus was the Son of God, the expected heir of David’s throne, the Messiah. It wasn’t until the 20th century that the Western (i.e., Roman Catholic) church separated out the celebration of the baptism of Christ to the first Sunday after Epiphany, which happens to be today according to the Lectionary we follow here!

Background of the Magi

So who were these Magi and where did they come from? Why did they have such a profound interest in identifying “his star” and following it to find the king? How would they even know about such a star? Was it prophesied somewhere, or was it just some oral tradition that had circulated through the Middle East for centuries?

As it turns out, there are a couple prophecies from the Old Testament that seem to refer to the star, the Magi or kings who would bring gifts, and where they come from. The two OT passages identified every year in the lectionary for January 6, Epiphany, are Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, the latter of which we already read this morning. We’ll come back to those in a moment. Traditionally, for hundreds of years, we’ve believed that these Magi from the East came from Persia, the region of modern-day Iran and Iraq. It’s true that Magi, or wise men, were well respected and wielded a great deal of political power in their heyday, especially as we see in the book of Daniel.

But in the excellent book called Mystery of the Magi by Dwight Longenecker, the author pulls together the history of the Persian Magi from several sources and shows that, by the time of Jesus’s birth, these Magi had lost most of their political power and influence after Alexander the Great conquered their territory and up through the time the Parthians had wrested control from Alexander’s successors. At the time of Christ’s birth, then, the Persian magi had become marginalized to the point of near exile and poverty, and their political ties to the Roman Empire were on such shaky ground that they would not have had the resources or the political influence to make such a trip to see the newborn king, let alone bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Enter the Nabateans. The Nabateans were an up-and-coming nation that inhabited the territory east of the Jordan River, from as far north as Damascus and as far south as the Arabian peninsula, including Midian and perhaps even modern-day Yemen. One of their most prominent cities was Petra, you know, that city with “Treasury” carved out of the side of a cliff. They had begun to come into prominence after the Jews were exiled to Babylon. In fact, many of the Jews who were exiled probably never made it to Babylon, because according to historians, there were several Jewish colonies scattered throughout the region the Nabateans controlled, and several made their way to these colonies instead. These exiles most likely included priests who would have brought with them the knowledge of the prophets, psalms, and Torah to lead their brethren in worship.

By the time of Jesus’s birth, the Nabateans controlled many of the trade routes between Persia and the Mediterranean. As such, they had wealth and access to abundant supplies of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, not to mention some pretty slick technology to capture and provide water for their survival in the desert regions where they lived. Longenecker believes these Magi came from Nabatea, and they would have had a deep understanding of Jewish prophecies, because they had strong ancestral ties to the Jews and strong religious ties to the Temple.

Prophetic Background for Epiphany

Having laid out this background, then, I want us to look first at Isaiah 60 to see why they mention following a star to find the Messiah. Listen to verses 1 through 3:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,

and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

2 See, darkness covers the earth

and thick darkness is over the peoples,

but the Lord rises upon you

and his glory appears over you.

3 Nations will come to your light,

and kings to the brightness of your dawn. [1]

Doesn’t that sound kind of like a star rising? And what about “his glory appears over you”? Kind of sounds like Matthew’s description of the Magi coming to where the star “stopped over the place where the child was.” Where was this place? According to Isaiah 60:14, it is “the City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” Where were Mary, Joseph, and Jesus? Well according to Matthew, by the time the Magi found him, they were in a house, not a stable. It’s not clear whether they were still in Bethlehem and where the star was in relation to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, but the context seems to suggest they were in or close to Bethlehem, because the area around Bethlehem was where Herod had the children under 2 killed. As such, I think it’s a fair assumption that this is at least the primary prophecy these Nabatean Magi had in mind. But let’s look a little further to be sure (vv. 4–5).

4 “Lift up your eyes and look about you:

All assemble and come to you;

your sons come from afar,

and your daughters are carried on the hip.

5 Then you will look and be radiant,

your heart will throb and swell with joy;

the wealth on the seas will be brought to you,

to you the riches of the nations will come. [2]

In Matthew’s story, we don’t have a count of how many Magi came to see Jesus. Again, tradition tries to fill in the gap by assigning one Magus to each gift. We know a bunch of shepherds had come to see baby Jesus in the manger, at the prompting of a “heavenly host” that hovered over them. If the Nabatean Magi thought this was such an important event, wouldn’t more than three of them have come? This would have been a pretty big deal for all of them! Add to that the Nabateans’ profitable trade industry, and you can see the connection to the “wealth on the seas” and the “riches of the nations” that could be brought to Israel.

Finally, vs. 6 names several cities that would have been in Nabatea, and vs. 7 mentions “the rams of Nebaioth.” Because the Nabateans do not have any surviving written documents we’re aware of, some have speculated that “Nebaioth” is actually the kingdom of the Nabateans. Verse 6 even mentions that “All those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense.”[3] At the time, the only source of frankincense known was in Sheba in southern Arabia and Somaliland in Africa.

So it seems pretty clear that Isaiah 60 was in fact one of the prophecies these Magi looked forward to, not just because it predicted the coming of the Messiah, but because the Nabateans recognized that they had a role to fulfill in that prophecy.

Psalm 72 sounds quite a bit like Isaiah 61, the prophecy Jesus read about himself the first time we see him speaking in the synagogue, especially the parts about defending the afflicted, crushing the oppressor, delivering the needy, and rescuing the poor from oppression and violence. Note that vs. 10 also mentions Sheba twice in reference to bringing gifts and gold “kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.” Given all this, it seems highly likely to me that these Magi were important rulers among the Nabateans, both religious and political, and that they had an intimate and rich connection to Jewish religion, culture, and ancestry.

What Epiphany Means for Us

So this is a lot of information here this morning, but what does it mean for us today? The gifts brought by the Magi were not randomly chosen. As we saw in the Isaiah and Psalms passages, they were “planned” long before Christ was born, and these Magi knew that. Gold was brought as a tribute to a king. Today, of course, many of us give of our resources to the church or other organizations that help the needy. We use that money to share the good news of Jesus and the gospel with those who need hope. It reminds me of the parable of the hidden treasure in Matthew 13:44: When the man found the treasure, he sold all that he had to buy the field it was in. The gift of gold is an easy one to figure out for us. My guess is, Mary and Joseph may have used some of that gold when they had to flee to Egypt to provide for their own needs in that short exile.

The gift of frankincense applies to us at a deeper level, the level of the heart. Frankincense was used in the worship ceremonies in the Tabernacle in the wilderness and in the temple in Jerusalem. The rarity of frankincense, along with its pleasing aroma, is what makes it valuable. I think it’s a fair jump, then, to suggest that it can also represent our own individual uniqueness in what we ourselves have to offer to God in worship. Worship is not just a ceremony or a ritual we perform on a regular basis. Worship comes from the root word “worth,” and we show we consider Christ worthy by offering the whole of our uniqueness to him and his service. Perhaps the apostle Paul had this in mind when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:14–15: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.[4]”

Finally, myrrh was used in part to ease severe pain, and also to prepare the body for the grave in that day. On the cross, Jesus was also offered wine mixed with myrrh, but according to Mark’s gospel, he refused it. Myrrh, then, can remind us that each of us must make ourselves ready for that day when we meet our Savior face to face in heaven, and are welcomed into our eternal home.

It occurs to me that Epiphany, then, is really a microcosm of the whole Christian experience. We celebrate the birth and revealing of Jesus as the Messiah, the dedication of our lives to him in worship, and the hope of eternal life that he purchased for us in his death and resurrection. And I have to say, preparing this message has been an “epiphany” for me. As a kid growing up in this church, I never thought much about Epiphany. I guess I was still too pumped up on the adrenaline I got from all my Christmas gifts to concern myself with the gifts presented to Jesus. As an adult, I never forgot my Presbyterian roots, but I had found a spiritual home among a brotherhood that had its own roots in Scottish Presbyterianism, but who didn’t have a separate recognition of this tradition—it was all wrapped up with Christmas. I never had a class in seminary about the traditions and what they signified in the “mainline” denominations.

So once again, I’ll say thank you for allowing me to share with you, and thank you for asking that I follow the Lectionary. I hope and pray our time together this morning has been as enlightening to you as it has been for me this week. Peace to you all. Amen.

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 Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

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

February 5, 2023

Living in the Beatitudes Beat

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Courage,Faith, Faithfulness,Isaiah,Matthew Gospel of,New Testament,Prayer,Psalms,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 1:07 pm
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Message preached at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, January 29, 2023. Text is lightly edited for publication.

Click above to play audio recording of the message.

David Letterman used to do his “Top 10” list every night on his late-night show. Often it was done tongue-in-cheek, usually with some sort of biting sarcasm or political slam on the issues of the day. But I want to ask you about a serious “Top 10” list. If you had to list out your top 10 favorite Bible verses or passages, what would they be? We’ll make this audience participation this morning: I’ll name a few passages here, and if you want to raise your hand and acknowledge the passage I mention, that would be great.

How about John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Psalm 23:1: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Ephesians 2:8: It is by grace you are saved, through faithfulness, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

Romans 8:1: There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:38–39: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How many of you would have today’s passage, Matthew 5:1–12, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, on your list? I know I would.

As we come to look at this passage today, I want to spend just a few minutes putting it into context. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get super technical here; I just want to make a couple connections to the Old Testament so that we can understand where some of the terminology comes from and what the words mean.

One of the first things we notice here is Jesus’s use of the word “blessed” at the beginning of each line of the Beatitudes. This is an important word to understand and not mistranslate lest we diminish its meaning. Let’s look at what the word doesn’t mean.

Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, tells the story of how he wanted to translate this passage. He mentioned that after preaching one Sunday, a woman came up to him afterwards and mentioned how “lucky” she felt to have found his congregation.

Peterson ruminated on that a bit, as he was in the process of writing the paraphrase at the time and thought “lucky” might be a more contemporary word that could be used in place “blessed.” However, when he floated that idea with his publishers, they shot it down pretty quickly, because there’s a large segment of Christianity that associates the word “luck” with “Lucifer.” That might be a buzz kill for someone wanting to publish a Bible translation.

Whether that connection is true is not relevant to understanding the word (makarios), however. The word “blessed” implies that something is coming from someone who has the power to give you something special or grant you a special permission in his kingdom. “Luck” has nothing to do with that. Peterson eventually accepted the word “blessed” here, because he recognized the word best represented the meaning of the text.

The same can be said for the Good News paraphrase treatment of the passage. That was the one that had a paperback cover that looked like a newspaper. They tried using the word “happy” to translate “blessed,” but again, it didn’t quite fit the intention of the biblical author. “Happiness” is circumstantial; it depends on what “happens” in our life. “Blessed” refers to a permanent state we have in God’s eyes, which is in fact what Jesus, through Matthew’s account, is trying to communicate to us here. The source of God’s blessings are neither “luck” nor “happenstance.” The blessing comes from God himself.

The first word of the first psalm in the collection of Psalms in the OT is “blessed.” “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, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord….” It’s quite possible in our Matthew passage, then, that he’s organized Jesus’s teaching in such a way that the Beatitudes are sort of an “introductory psalm” to his Gospel and to the teaching of Jesus.

In fact, the first 12 verses here have many characteristics of a certain type of psalm: The lines begin with the same word throughout; there are several key words that begin primarily with one of three consonant sounds: the p, k, or l. I have no idea if there’s any significance to those letters, but it seems intentional that Matthew did this, or that Jesus chose his words as such, to establish some sort of “beat” or “rhythm” to the opening passage, much like a psalm would have had. So with that in mind, I’ve created my own “Beatitudes Beat” that adds some real-life allusions to situations many of us have faced or will face in our lives in order to help us understand what Jesus may have been thinking when he preached these words to a large crowd outside Galilee. I hope you’ll find it both enjoyable and memorable.

Before I get into the beat, though, there’s one more term I want to provide some biblical context for. The English word “meek” (Greek πραΰς pra-us; Hebrew עָנָו ʿānāw) is often misunderstood, because it sounds so much like its opposite. “Meekness” is NOT the same thing as and is in fact contrary to “weakness.” Meekness implies a sort of restrained or harnessed strength, like that of a bridled horse. Psalm 37:8–11 gives us a pretty solid picture of what meekness means:

8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;

do not fret—it leads only to evil.

9 For those who are evil will be destroyed,

but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

10 A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.

11 But the meek will inherit the land

and enjoy peace and prosperity. [1]

Notice the tone of the verses. The psalmist gives us hope that God will deal with evil and wicked people in his own time. We can have hope in his righteous judgment on the wicked. Look at the parallel wording in verses 9 & 11. Who inherits the land? Those who hope in the Lord are made equal to the meek when it comes to inheriting the land and enjoying peace and prosperity.

Regardless of what you may think of the politics of the situation, I think a perfect example of meekness we saw this week would be the mother whose son was beaten by the Memphis police. She called for calm and to not repeat the violent and destructive protests of a few years ago. That shows incredible restraint and strength of character in the face of a truly tragic situation. That’s what meekness is: keeping calm and carrying on while leaving the big stuff to God. Having made those two clarifications, let’s jump into the “Beatitudes Beat” and see what God wants us to see.

When doubt creeps in

Because you see so much sin:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

When your vision gets blurred

And you can’t see God’s word:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

When life drains you

But God’s hope sustains you

And His people maintain you:

Blessed are the poor in Spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

When your loved ones sleep

Awaiting God’s keep:

Blessed are those who mourn.

When your loss is profound

And you’re on shaky ground:

Blessed are those who mourn.

When you can’t see your way

At the end of the day

And all you can do is pray:

Blessed are those who mourn,

For they will be comforted.

When your anger is strong

But you hold your tongue:

Blessed are the meek.

When you know evil’s fate

And remember God is great

Blessed are the meek

When your hope’s in the Lord

Standing firm on his word

Wielding the Spirit’s sword

Blessed are the meek,

For they will inherit the earth.[2]

When your soul has been stirred

And you long for God’s word:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

When you know hope is true

And God’s carried you through:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

When you know God’s healing,

Faith is more than a feeling

And with joy you are reeling:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they will be filled.

When your love is displayed

To those dismayed:

Blessed are the merciful.

When you’re good to those

Who would bloody your nose,

Blessed are the merciful.

When you see the pain of a mother

Or the hurt of a brother

And with God’s love you do cover:

Blessed are the merciful,

For they will be shown mercy.

When you know you’ve done right

‘Cuz you’re a child of the Light

Blessed are the pure in heart.

When you stand for the truth

And your life is its proof:

Blessed are the pure in heart.

When you speak by the Spirit

So that all flesh may hear it

And no one will fear it:

Blessed are the pure in heart

For they will see God.

When the hurt you’ve received

Needs to be relieved

Blessed are the peacemakers

When the hurt that you’ve given

Needs to be forgiven:

Blessed are the peacemakers.

When you see the strife

Of husband and wife

And offer them new life:

Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they will be called children of God.

When you stand for what’s right

And the world picks a fight:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

When you defend the innocent

The world treats with malevolence;

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

When you take a stand

For God and land

Upheld by His right hand:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

© Scott Stocking, February 4, 2023

And that is the Beatitudes Beat.

Jesus closes out the first section of his Sermon on the Mount with these words in vv. 11–12:

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.[3]

The overall message of the Beatitudes reminds me of the section of the scroll of Isaiah Jesus read in Luke 4:18–19. The fuller context of that passage from Isaiah 61:1–3 has some strong parallels to the Beatitudes, as you’ll hear:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3     and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the Lord

for the display of his splendor.[4]

Jesus says in the Beatitudes that in spite of the ups and downs of the life of faithful followers of Christ, we can always be glad, whatever we face, because we know we have a great reward in heaven, and a great cloud of witnesses around us who have gone through the same cycles of the faith that you and I go through. Take heart then: be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Know that the perfect love reflected in the Beatitudes can cast out all fear when we live in the Beatitudes Beat.

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

[2] See Psalm 37:8–11

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

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

December 13, 2022

Signs of the Son (Matthew 11:2–11; Psalm 146:5–10; Isaiah 35:1–10)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Eschatology,Isaiah,Life of Christ,Matthew Gospel of,Miracles,New Testament,Psalms,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 9:39 pm
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Message preached at Mt. View Presbyterian Church December 11, 2022, Third Sunday in Advent, based on passages from the Revised Common Lectionary for that day.

How many of you remember the 1971 hit song “Signs” by the Five Man Electric Band? “Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign, blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this; don’t do that. Can’t you read the sign.” The song came out at the tail end of the Hippie movement, questioning authority and flaunting rules that seemed to exclude those who weren’t socially acceptable in the eyes of those who had power.

The Bible only ever speaks of two such “signs” associated with Jesus: One sign read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” and it was hung on the cross with Jesus. The other sign was a seal on the stone covering the entrance to his tomb (Matthew 27:66), indicating that Rome had authorized it and secured it. The first sign was accurate, even if the Romans only intended it to indicate the accusation against Jesus for which he was crucified. The second sign turned out to be of no consequence, because no one could keep the Son of God from rising from the dead and sealed in a tomb.

Of course, the other signs associated with Jesus in the Scriptures were not carved into wood, embossed on a wax seal, or chiseled into stone. They were the kinds of grandiose signs that only God and his son could “write” both in people and in nature. These were the signs that the prophets had written about long ago of what to expect when the Messiah would come.

The reading from Psalms (146:5–10) today speaks of some of those signs:

Upholding the cause of the oppressedForgiving the woman caught in the act of adultery when the male was nowhere to be found (John 7:53–8:11)
Giving food to the hungryFeeding the 5,000 and 4,000 (Luke 9:10–17 & par.; Mark 8:1–13 & par.)
Setting the prisoners freeAt Jesus’s crucifixion, the dead came out of their tombs in Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52–53)
Giving sight to the blindHealing many who were blind (Luke 7:21–23)

Isaiah 35:1–10 gives us more insight into what the OT prophets were expecting from the Messiah, some of it overlapping with the Psalm passage above:

The desert and the parched land will be glad;

the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom;

it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,

the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;

they will see the glory of the Lord,

the splendor of our God.

3 Strengthen the feeble hands,

steady the knees that give way;

4 say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

he will come to save you.”

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

and streams in the desert.

7 The burning sand will become a pool,

the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

8 And a highway will be there;

it will be called the Way of Holiness;

it will be for those who walk on that Way.

The unclean will not journey on it;

wicked fools will not go about on it.

9 No lion will be there,

nor any ravenous beast;

they will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there,

10   and those the Lord has rescued will return.

They will enter Zion with singing;

everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them,

and sorrow and sighing will flee away. [1]

Most of us know the various stories from the Old and New Testaments that go along with Isaiah’s description in the first 7 verses of chapter 35. Noah and his family were spared through the flood, which Peter would say is a “sign” or “type” of the NT concept of baptism in his first letter. The Passover and the parting of the Red Sea were the ultimate events that won the Jews their freedom from Egypt. In the church today, we celebrate that “Passover” with the signs of the bread and cup at communion. Moses drew water from the rock for the Jews in the desert, and Jesus told the woman at the well (John 4) that he had water that would permanently end her thirst. Elisha raised a Shunamite widow’s son, and Jesus brought forth Lazarus from the tomb after four days. Let’s not forget the resurrection, either!

In vs 8 of the passage from Isaiah, the prophet mentions a highway called “The Way of Holiness.” In those times, some religions had special paved roads between temples only for those who were faithful. Essentially what this is saying is that God will clear out all obstacles that might keep us from heaven. No longer would it depend on legalistic rules or strict adherence to the Law of Moses. Jesus himself would be the Way, and that is in fact what he calls himself in John 14, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and the believers early on in Acts are said to be following “The Way.”

So as we turn to our Gospel passage today from Matthew 11, let’s look at what’s been going in Jesus’s ministry to this point. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus spends three chapters delivering the Sermon on the Mount. Then the next two chapters after that contain several stories of Jesus healing people, calming a storm, and calling more disciples. In chapter 10, he solidifies his “leadership team” of the twelve disciples and gives them a long list of instructions before sending them out, as well as the authority to heal and cast out demons on their own. In chapter 11, Jesus’s ministry, mission, and popularity have grown significantly, and his cousin John the Baptizer wants to know if Jesus really is the coming Messiah. I think this is why Matthew has organized his Gospel the way he did, because Jesus can point to his teaching and the miracles he’s been doing and others are doing in his name as “signs” that he is indeed the Messiah. Jesus always seems somewhat reluctant to admit that outright; he simply indicates that his work speaks for itself. As Muhammed Ali once said, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

After Jesus sends John’s disciples away with the information they needed, he turns toward the crowd and their attention to John the Baptizer. He asks them about who they came out to see when John was preaching in the wilderness. The bottom line was, they had come out to see a prophet, because there hadn’t been a prophet in Israel for over 400 years. With this, Jesus confirms yet another “sign” for the crowd, the sign of John’s ministry, by applying the words of Malachi 3:1 to John: the messenger who goes ahead of Jesus announcing his arrival. By doing so, this adds another layer of fulfilled prophecy to what Matthew already applied to him: not only does Jesus indicate he’s fulfilled prophecies about his work and ministry, but now he’s saying he’s fulfilled prophecies about what others would be saying about him.

The Pharisees and Sadducees should have recognized the signs. They, after all, were the primary repository of all Jewish written and oral tradition when it came to the Scriptures and history. But in Matthew 16, Jesus scolds them for being able to interpret weather signs, but not the “signs of the times” that pointed to Jesus. In Matthew 24, we get the fuller picture of what that “end time” might look like. Wars and rumors of war; famines and earthquakes; persecution and death; false prophets; the increase of wickedness; and every other evil at work to spiral us down the drain.

Christians throughout the ages have found reason to speculate they were each living in the time of the end and that they would see the return of the Messiah. I can remember in the late 70s and early 80s when I first began to understand that Jesus was coming again and the various things they were saying about the world we live in. Talk of supercomputers, even as the home computer was just starting to enter the market, that would be able to read the mark of the beast on your forehead or hand to determine if you could buy or sell. The irony is, the talk in the 70s and 80s about what some of these things might look like sound very much like our modern day smart phones. But don’t go chucking your cell phones through the stained glass here: They’re not the antichrist. But they are tools that can be used for both good and evil; we’re called to make sure they don’t get used or abused for evil purposes. It’s a little scary to think they’re real-time history books of our own lives, so let’s make sure we’re writing a good history.

Two weeks ago, we learned that no generation of God’s people has ever lived that didn’t have the hope of a coming Messiah. Today we’ve seen that the signs of that coming Messiah show up in so many places in the Old Testament. Doesn’t it make sense then that God has been revealing signs of Jesus’s second coming throughout history since his crucifixion and resurrection? Jesus does imply that we should be able to recognize the signs of the times, so they must be out there, right? But as technology has gradually taken over our lives and our culture has sadly grown more biblically illiterate, we’ve tended to lose the sensitivities we once had as a human race to see these “big picture” signs that God is still at work to bring his eternal kingdom to those of us who believe.

God has been revealing signs of Jesus’s second coming throughout history since his crucifixion and resurrection

I think most of us are savvy enough to distinguish what these “signs” of Jesus’s second coming look like. Matthew 24 has an extensive list, and some of the things on that list are not much different now than what they were in Jesus’s day. They’re not limited to a particular political viewpoint or cultural perspective. After all, we’ve ALL sinned and fallen short of God’s glory; but thanks be to God for his grace, forgiveness, and mercy that will protect those who put their trust in him in the last days.

So amidst the hustle and bustle of the final two weeks of the Christmas season, take some time to reflect on the signs of the Son: those that show he is the Messiah, and those that suggest he may be coming soon. Rejoice that we have a Savior who’s sent his Spirit to encourage and embolden us. Be alert, be aware; prepare yourselves and be ready. That day may be closer than you think.

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

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