 
Soul Seeds: Jesus' Parables

By Ed Hurst

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Ed Hurst

**Copyright notice** : People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior – "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)

Permission is granted to copy, reproduce and distribute for non-commercial reasons, provided the book remains in its original form.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - Salt and Light

Chapter 3 - Treasured Living

Chapter 4 - Pigs and Pearls

Chapter 5 - Hard Paths

Chapter 6 - Holy Detectives

Chapter 7 - New Life in Old Forms

Chapter 8 - Worthy of All Sacrifice

Chapter 9 - Casting Aside Your Burdens

Chapter 10 - Divine Order

Chapter 11 - The Institution Can Fail

Chapter 12 - Christ's Wedding Feast

Chapter 13 - Taken for Judgment

Chapter 14 - Self-appointed Fools

Chapter 15 - Can't Please `Em

Chapter 16 - Public Privacy

Chapter 17 - Can Anything Good Come out of Samaria?

Chapter 18 - The Vast Gulf Between

Chapter 19 - What Time Is It?

Chapter 20 - By Its Nature, the Kingdom

Chapter 21 - Tough Enough

Chapter 22 - Confidence Games

Chapter 23 - Never Satisfied

Chapter 24 - Kingdom to Come

Chapter 25 - Not in Shadow

Chapter 26 - Soul Seeds

Chapter 1 - Introduction

The parables of Jesus helped to serve the purpose of revealing deep truths, while separating the true seekers from the religious busy-bodies. Given the context of these stories is some 2000 years in the past, their meaning is no longer obvious even to true seekers. Because of this, an awful lot of silly teaching has arisen based apparently on what these parables would mean only from our own historical context. In an attempt to restore some sanity, I offer an examination of selected parables which are often twisted.

I'll never forget; he told me, "You can't make a parable walk on all fours." In his quaint rural dialect, this very wise country preacher was telling me something which should have been a matter of common sense. Many people over-work the teachings of Jesus, delivered mostly in parables, in an attempt to extract every possible detail. I often think Jesus would have been horrified at what has been made of some of His lessons.

First, let's have a little background. In our modern culture, a real education, including the full range of Liberal Arts – the Classics, multiple foreign languages, history instead of propaganda, etc. – is very much a rarity. While this is not a screed to criticize modern education, it's important we note the facts. It's no secret our Enemy will do all in his power to block the Truth. Rather than placing blame for this state of affairs, it's enough to note what burden this places on those aspiring to teach God's Word: We have to fill in the gaps so God's People can intelligently decide how to follow Him.

The Holy Spirit will use you as you are, but your cultural and intellectual orientation can actively war against His power, preventing you from understanding of some things. Even with the best Liberal Arts education, we are still far removed from the time and culture of Jesus. So very much of what we read in Scripture is hard to follow because most of it was written in a totally foreign setting. Many of the assumptions we bring to God's Word confuse the issues completely. Rather than an attempt to promote a Christianity where the Bible is regarded as safe only in the hands of an elite caste of high priests with the "proper" education, my aim is to start all believers the path to that high status.

Of course, we cannot discount the importance of proper training and education for our spiritual leadership. Somewhere in the complexity of relying on God – recognizing that 2000 years of Christian history cannot be ignored, avoiding past abuses, not reinventing the wheel – we do well to place a higher priority on one's calling, and secondarily on professional preparation. The called-but-unprepared can eventually get what God wants for their preparation, provided they are faithfully pursuing His will. On the other hand, God save us from highly professional leaders who are self-called.

The reader will likely have considered the difficult balancing act of deciding on whom to rely as a fit spiritual leader. This writer obviously seeks your open mind, hoping to give evidence first of the calling, and also of the education. As I rely on the Holy Spirit to guide this writing, I must rely on Him to convince the hearts and minds of readers.

In addressing the parables of Jesus, we must first grapple with the gulf of understanding between us today and the people of Jesus' time. The cultural differences, while numerous, can be broached best by making one broad generalization: Our modern Western civilization is built on what is called "inductive reasoning," and "deductive reasoning," while the ancient Hebrew culture was initially built on symbolic reasoning, often mistaken for formless mysticism. Rather than chase tangents in defining the full meaning of those terms, I will risk overly simplifying, relying on the reader to keep in mind such generalizations are generally accurate, but never precisely true.

It matters not how we operate intellectually as individuals; our Western Civilization is based on certain assumptions of how knowledge is gained. How do we _know_ things? Inductive reasoning is the habit of mind which attempts to survey and observe all available to us. We gather piles and piles of facts and attempt to organize them and build categories. We test things under various conditions, and attempt to explain the hows and whys based on what we can discern from the tests. This is by far the best way to understand the basic rules for living in this world. If we see fire, and touch anything close to that fire, finding it hot to the touch, even painful, we reasonably conclude fire itself will hurt us even more. Thus, we gain a working knowledge of our world. The facts are inducted into a body of knowledge.

Induction is a poor means to learn everything we need to live. Instead of experiencing everything first hand, we rely on others to share with us their experiences. We then take that knowledge given and deduce from it broader implications as we match it to our own experiences.

Induction and deduction alone are unfit to approach things which stand outside the world of direct human experience. The Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mystical culture approached life from the opposite end, so to speak. That which is eternal, which transcends the senses, is the place to start. This is more than mere deductive reasoning, because it requires allowing revealed truth to reshape our very being, not merely our intellectual grasp. Over the ages, things have been revealed from powers beyond this world, and are clues to how we should view what takes place here. Indeed, what takes place here merely symbolizes what goes on there. The Person of God is indicated by how He acts on this level. Truth is a Person, not mere principles. Our daily experiences of life are to be understood in light of what we come know about that Person, giving them a personal meaning. What can be seen is an illustration of what cannot be seen. Facts which do not seem to fit the image of the Person are put aside for a time, until their place is discerned. We don't waste too much time on knowing facts, but invest effort into knowing that Person.

In the ANE viewpoint, the great wise man is one who has striven to embrace that Person early on, then spent sufficient time contemplating the events of life to see where they fit in the image of revealed Truth. In the Western mold, contrary to that, the great wise man is one who has paid attention to all the details of life, observed them in all likely settings, and constructed a complex framework which adequately accounts for all those details. It is an exercise in fixing a static and impersonal entity called "truth" – but always devoid of God as Person.

It would be wholly misleading to say the Jews of Jesus' time used neither inductive nor deductive reasoning. Nor do we today suffer an absence of symbolic reasoning. The primary reason for Jesus' miracles was to present Living Truth which challenged the static framework Jewish leaders had adopted, cast in stone, of what was assumed to be Truth. Anyone who had actually read the Old Testament, rather than relying on the vast pile of commentaries from generations of rabbis past, would recognize what Jesus taught was consistent with God's Word. By the time Jesus was born, the concept behind the term "The Law of Moses" had become corrupted, a mockery of what it had once been. Thus, while in the strictest sense Jesus was teaching Moses, He was contradicting what the Jewish leaders associated with Moses.

Jesus warned His opponents they didn't understand the Law, and often corrected their mechanistic concepts with the living Law, a Law He said was summed up in love – loving loyalty to God, and loving others enough to regard their welfare as our own. For many reasons, He most often used parables to say things. In keeping with the ancient Hebrew mindset, He would make reference to something in everyday life and show how it illustrated some higher element of Living Truth. It wouldn't do to milk the illustration for every detail, as if it were a mere allegory, with a shallow one-to-one equivalence He could easily have said in plainer terms. The point was to indicate something for which there were no words. In so doing, there was usually a single point to make, not a stack of details. When the details of the story did matter, Jesus would say so.

My fear is Christian writers too often attempt to show how clever they are in drawing out numerous little applications from some parables. Thus, they are guilty of transgressing one of our own modern parables: "can't see the forest for the trees." In chasing details – _this_ tree, and _that_ tree – they never see the whole as it makes up a rather simple concept. Since writing was an art practiced by few in ancient times, instruction had to be simple and memorable. Pithy illustrations could be recalled in their general application, not as precise dissertations which must be remembered word-for-word, as if each word was some code for a full paragraph.

We will examine the parables of Jesus from as much of His own frame of reference as we can grasp, beginning with Matthew's Gospel and passing on through to John's. Nothing here suggests you can't arrive at a different answer, a different application to any of these parables. Taking a cue from Solomon's grand collection of parables, Proverbs, let's keep in mind: "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend" (Proverbs 27:17).

I suppose I should warn my readers not every illustration used by Jesus would classify as a parable. There is parable and there is parabolic language. Webster defines "parable" as a short fictitious story, normally used to illustrate some higher principle. Over the centuries, Bible scholars have fudged the boundaries a bit, including some comments which were not exactly stories. We can't even say it's a matter of differentiating between the literary devices we know as "simile" and "metaphor." Rather than slavishly follow any litarary pattern, I will select passages over which I have seen and heard much foolishness in the past. Thus, we will adhere to the original purpose, and the title, of the series.

Chapter 2- Salt and Light

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven." (Matthew 6:13-16)

I could not believe my ears. They were actually arguing about whether salt could be chemically changed into something less salty! As if that were important enough to justify a debate. I walked out of that class shaking my head.

Of course the salt used in Jesus' day wasn't like ours. What you and I buy in the stores is more or less artificially produced in a highly purified form of 99.99% sodium chloride. The salt used in the first century AD was not so pure, usually. It was mined from the earth, so it was essentially dirt or soft rock. It was often slightly colored gray or brown, and when broken up for food use, faintly yellow. It contained all sorts of other minerals. Perhaps we could debate whether it was any healthier than what we use today, but that also would be missing the point.

All that matters is this: If salt from a mine was not salty, what was it? Dirt. It was the same stuff as the ground on which we walk. So if salt didn't do what salt was intended to do, if it didn't serve the purpose for which folks worked hard to dig it out of the ground, then why bother keeping it separate from the ground? It's just dirt.

What is it salt does, making it worth all the trouble to dig? Two things are obvious: taste and preservation. In a world where spices were a luxury, the one thing to prevent food from being bland was salt. We could easily get bogged down in yet another debate over whether the desire for salted food is learned or natural, but that's also missing the point. Jesus simply used an illustration even poor folks would recognize – they liked some food with salt. Some of what they had to eat was frankly unpalatable without it.

In this world, were it not for people who love the Lord, and earnestly desire to please Him, humanity would be downright unpalatable to God. Ask the generation of Noah how many of those folks cared at all what Jehovah thought of their lives. They all ended up floating carcasses. What holds back another flood of destruction is God's promise and His command humans live in civility. Human civilizations may well fail to understand that command, but we who are spiritual have no excuse. As we seek today to serve the Father, we are often what holds back another flood of destruction – though He promised it would not be literal water the next time.

Salt serves another, perhaps more important purpose: preservation. In a time when refrigeration meant hauling stuff up into the highest mountains above the snow line, salt was literally a life saver. Until rather recent human history, meat was for many a delicacy, expensive and not served at every meal. When meat could be had, it was often not in convenient serving sizes. One would purchase a leg of some animal, take it home and attempt to preserve it from rot and decay until it was all eaten. The easiest way was to salt it down. Indeed, given so very much of what meat was eaten then was salted, it may account for why we all prefer it that way, even today.

Depending on whom you ask, it is plausible to assert much of what is today called "Western Civilization" was the result of some sort of Christianity. When the Apostles first began spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, it was quite new. Rome officially persecuted Christians off and on for the next 300 years after the Ascension. Eventually, politics shifted and claiming Christ became officially tolerated, and then officially supported. While it thus suffered some corruption by its mixture with politics, it nonetheless remained a positive force for change in the world, particularly in culture. As the old Christian Rome fell to the pagan Germanic tribes, Christianity seemed to fade for awhile. Yet, a short time later it became the new religion of one very powerful Germanic prince, who then conquered and exported his new faith among his kindred. Thus, from the ashes of a Europe overrun by German hordes, the light of partial civilization dawned on them, as well.

While noting sadly the strong element of politics and paganism mixed into this Medieval Christian religion, it was the same Jesus and His teachings which helped tame the savage hordes, however poorly His teachings might have been understood. It was a dramatic change. Since then, Christianity has often been a symbol of less change, and a conservation of tradition. This is because most of that tradition reflects an assumption of biblical virtue, one mixed with something purely cultural at times. While we might disagree about what is and is not moral – i.e., Christlike – that there is a morality easily recognized by all is quite an achievement in itself. Bring Christianity to any culture, and there will be demands for change. Try to undo those changes later and Christians, such as they are, will likely protest. Silence their voices, remove their witness, and the culture will rot and become worse.

While there is something we might call a distinctive Christian culture, most generations have falsely assumed their own brand of sub-culture is the most Christian of all. They project their own biases back onto Scripture. Christian culture is essentially tribal, living as an extended household, or several extended households within a clan or tribal village. Instead of human DNA, it's about spiritual DNA, as it were. It's all about persons and families, and any other organizational framework is a mistake. Sadly, we find it much easier to assume the trappings of our secular cultural surroundings as something we simply cannot change. If we do not change at least some things, we cannot really have a witness to our world.

And thus we are brought back to the point of this parable: We are to be a light to the people around us. We as believers are the source of God's revelation to our world. It is the nature of light to bring into stark clarity where and what everything is. Simply grappling with everyday things from an eternal standpoint is itself revealing. That we care and seek to promote what really and truly matters to God is our first and best sermon to all we touch. It is inevitable that some things offered us must be rejected, because Our God is Holy, and expects holiness from us. That we may also get a chance to explain the nature of our objections the cultural context is all we can hope for. Where it goes from there is God's business.

With the images of both salt and light, there is an implied warning. If we fail to be what salt ought to be, if we fail to do what light by its nature does, we dishonor Him Who called us salt and light. A faith which is hidden is no faith at all. Even when folks around us don't know what to label it, there must be an obvious difference between our presence and our absence. If our presence makes no significant difference, then why do we exist? Why does He mine us from the ground of common humanity; why does He set our hearts on fire?

We _must_ make a difference. It is our nature.

Chapter 3 - Treasured Living

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:19-23)

There's not a whole lot of controversy on these two. However, I don't often see them discussed together. It is likely what Matthew records here is a thematic collection of teachings which he gathered without reference to chronology, but I am certain these two came as a single unit. It only seems two different messages in our modern English translations, and in our modern Western culture. How sad if we miss the connection!

The lesson on treasure is obvious enough I've seldom seen or heard it twisted too far from the primary point. Jesus made much of getting His listeners to give this world and its goods a much lower priority than the Kingdom. He told the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16ff) it would really please the Father if he would abandon his worldly possessions and become a disciple, wandering with Jesus. Eternal living means a life unbounded by this world and its treasures. This was not precisely stated in the Law, but it was certainly implied. Jesus wasn't playing mind games with the man; this was the man's real need.

The young man's problem was his clinging attachment to his worldly possessions. Jesus never condemned wealth as evil, but described it as a tool. Material resources were simply one more means to serve God's purposes in this world, just as musical talent or physical strength could be held as gifts from God. He gave such gifts precisely so we could give them back to Him. They are His gracious provision for including us in something which is a high privilege. We all deserve to die a slow painful death, followed by an eternity roasting in Hell. Nothing we could give could purchase deliverance from such a fate, because it all comes from Him in the first place.

Perhaps the most frequent error believers make in reading the above passage is in not carrying it far enough. Worldly people treasure a lot of things, not just tangible property, or talents. Surely we could name folks who treasure political power? How about a massive and thorough education, vast knowledge? How about the total freedom to do as one pleases? We could go on, but it's enough to note the Rich Young Ruler was also being challenged to sacrifice his place among the elite of Jewish society, the elite who claimed to know God, but were His enemies.

Jesus reminded His disciples almost nothing humanity valued was really important. Even the Law says this, if anyone cares to read between the lines, as was intended. If we as believers can fully grasp how all those things are subject to loss at the whim of natural and human forces – indeed almost certainly will be lost sooner or later – then we could be free to focus on what really matters. We could see how all these things we have here are but the means to accomplish God's calling. Things we do to please the Father cannot be lost or taken away, because such are treasured by Him. No power in Creation, or outside Creation, nor ever was, nor ever will be, nor ever could be, imaginary or unimaginable, can diminish the value He places on our loyalty to Him (see Romans 8:38-39).

But, there is something else we need to get us there: clarity of vision. Jesus was quoting a common rabbinical phrase, referring to the eye as the lamp of the body. It was a figure of speech to highlight a spiritual principle, another example of parabolic language.

The word translated as "good" in describing the eye is literally "singular" – indicating a singularity of commitment. A "bad" eye was literally "double," and it's obviously linked to our phrase "double-minded." To see this world clearly is to see it as God sees it. To have our loyalties divided is dangerous. It compares favorably with being spiritually blinded. If your commitment to the Kingdom is uncertain, you are no better than the uncommitted, the spiritually blind.

Jesus goes on to draw the point more starkly: "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (v. 24)

Never mind where the word "mammon" comes from; it's all too obvious it means something on the order of worldly wealth. There are no half measures here. Anyone who has tried to placate more than one superior can tell you: It can't be done, or even attempted, without going insane. Being caught between the two, a person ceases to exist; they dare not be themselves. Nor can you ever claim to have really obeyed either one.

God says: If you do not serve Him with a whole heart, you do not serve Him at all.

Chapter 4 - Pigs and Pearls

"Do not give what is holy to dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces." (Matthew 7:6)

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) was not a laundry list of free-standing epigrams. One thing leads to another. The whole bunch is a corrective restatement of the Law of Moses according to the higher spiritual principles to which the Law points. In this context, Jesus shows how previous Talmudic teachings are actually against the Law of Moses. The dominant school of thought in Jewish society was Pharisee, and Jesus sought to break its grip.

In the previous chapter of Matthew, Jesus hammered home the requirement to divorce ourselves from materialism. Pharisees would judge the handling of property by a long list of rules and customary assumptions, all of which formed a very complex and heavy burden of regulation. Yet it was clear all that teaching tilted the playing field in their favor. Whatever it was they were doing could always be justified, but whatever it was poor peasants were doing was usually wrong. This was an obvious double standard. In particular, the Pharisees made much of what we today would call "saving for a rainy day." Their teaching and legal maneuvering kept the peasants poor, but kept themselves wealthy. They gave exemptions for tithing and charity which applied only to the wealthy, largely by virtue of exempting things only the wealth could obtain. They complained the peasants were being greedy when they didn't bankrupt themselves for the Temple offerings and taxes, but always paid their own out of pocket change. Everybody could see through this, and it was a common complaint of that day. They made wealth their true god, but Jehovah could sweep it all away overnight.

Thus, the rather obvious meaning of the verses just before verse 6, about the speck versus the beam in the eye, warns the Pharisaical minded to examine themselves for greed first. Our own modern day proverb for that one is, "Clean up your own backyard." No one says we cannot judge sin in others, but we should only preach about things we've conquered (or are conquering) in our own lives. Jesus wanted His listeners to understand this was not a blanket condemnation on pointing the finger at sin, since the Law called for such (Ezekiel 33:7-9). He next told them something which literally _required_ them to judge – recognizing some folks were proverbial swine or dogs.

Most of us have a tough time accepting, much less understanding, the Jewish cultural distaste for dogs. We tend to think anyone is barbaric who doesn't like dogs. Without tracing down the lineage of why dogs were hated, let's say simply this: For as long as anyone could remember in that part of the world, dogs were a serious threat to life and limb. They were wild, and would kill just for the thrill of it. They carried diseases which made them all the more repugnant. Further, the term "dog" was used to label the homosexual male prostitutes in pagan temples. Dogs served no useful purpose in Jewish society.

So when Jesus advised His listeners not to throw anything holy to dogs, it seemed on the surface He was preaching to the choir – to suggest they would do so was almost insulting. No one would knowingly feed anything at all to dogs, much less food which had been part of a sacred meal. What most likely came to mind when Jesus said this was the Passover Lamb. According to the Law of Moses, the host was required to throw leftover lamb in the fire before morning. Tossing it to dogs was unthinkable, an abomination.

Pigs had an equally bad image. While most of us Gentiles love ham and bacon, we aren't likely to be fond of live pigs in their natural state. They wallow in any damp spot during warm weather, and will consume anything which even vaguely resembled food at one time. If it smells rotten, they are all the more excited by it. In ancient times they carried a host of diseases and parasites which could infect humans. It's no surprise God made it forbidden for Israel to eat them. In fact, Jews would never willingly get within stone-throwing distance of pigs.

On the other hand, pearls were one of the most valued jewelry items in Jesus' time. Few people had even seen pearls up close. About the only place the translucent cream-colored beads could be seen was decorating the extremely wealthy and powerful. The idea of offering them to pigs was, again, completely beyond their imagination.

Of course, this was a parable, not to be taken for its literal meaning. It represents a higher principle. The teaching of Jesus was the Word of God. It was holy, valuable beyond measure. It could not be priced in worldly terms. It was precious, and living its principles made one precious to God. It was to be shared with others, spread abroad to the entire world. It was God's precious gift to all humanity.

This Truth of God was all encompassing; it applied to, and affected, every detail of life. Indeed, it defined life, _was_ life. Obeying the underlying spiritual principles of the Law of Moses would make life worth living, and would reveal God's heart. It was the substance behind all Creation, the Divine Principle of existence itself. Having received this treasure from God, the Jewish leaders corrupted it, twisted it into an empty husk of legalism. Such careless handling of God's Word made them no smarter than pigs or dogs. They had no idea what they had been given. Taking the true meaning of the Law back to the Pharisees was no better than feeding Passover Lamb to dogs, or offering pearls to swine. But this image has even broader implications.

On the one hand, you must look deep into the mirror of God's Word and take His power to victory over sin in your life. What you have not conquered is difficult to preach. Either way, we are not called to condemn people, but sin. People will condemn themselves when you speak the truth with love, because their own conscience will witness against them. If not, don't get worked up over it. They are like pigs or dogs, and don't know the value of love and grace. Only God can change hearts.

In our daily walk with the Savior, there are people crossing our paths who will simply never grasp the testimony of His power in us. Sometimes we can tell immediately; sometimes we have to work with them a bit. As we reach out to them in love, that same love grants them the full right to avoid that love. We persist as long as He presses us to present His love to them. We move away, not if they reject it, but when His love says so.

But they are not the pigs and swine to which Jesus refers; He was pointing at those who claimed to have the Word already. It tires me to hear the teaching of evangelism presented with such a false human urgency that everyone listening receives unjustly a sense of guilt and condemnation. I am angry at all those who chopped the gospel message up into neat little packages to be memorized as canned presentations. Their reasoning was it would save time if everyone could learn "this proven technique." Yes, people are dying and going to Hell every moment of every day. If it truly depended on us to save them all, then we might as well lie down and die now. We cannot save them. Only Jesus can save them. This sort of frantic spirit of fear, that we dare not even sleep lest we miss some opportunity, comes not from God. It is from Satan to make fools of us and to ensure our ineffectiveness.

I've seen over-zealous "soul-winners" literally close the door on someone's heart because they pushed when their target was least receptive. The canned words and cutesy outline failed utterly to register. The gospel is not our message until it is living in us, in our unique situation of life. It takes time with God, His Word, and His people even to begin. If it is our nature to be gregarious and eloquent, we may have a head start. If not, it's best to remember: How we act in general is more important, and must precede any words. This writer can affirm beyond a shadow of any doubt how all the people I know who came to Jesus through my efforts were unanimous in telling me that they were touched by how I acted, and only later by what I said. It has been ever true from the first day I served Him.

It takes good, wise judgment of situations and people. Far more important it is that we keep our every waking moment simply in His Spirit, and in His power, whatever it is our bodies and minds find to do. Let us be found faithfully going about the business of life as He gave it to us. Early or late in our walk, this is the one proper way to share the pearls of truth.

Chapter 5 - Hard Paths

"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find." (Matthew 7:13-14)

Jesus lived in a Hebrew culture, based largely on what we know today as the Aramaic language. Though they referred to it as "Hebrew," it was not exactly the Hebrew used in most of the Old Testament, but similar. Old Hebrew texts read aloud in public were quite difficult to follow for the average Jew of the first century AD. It was common to have an interpreter on hand to translate such readings. They usually rendered it somewhat less than literally, though they were supposed to be careful about too freely departing from the Hebrew text (Nehemiah 8:1-8; note especially verse 8: "giving the sense"). The practice was known as _targum_ – to paraphrase or interpret.

The New Testament was published entirely in Greek, and for the most part it appears the writers used Greek in composing the material. For some, that would be rather challenging. Greek scholars tell us John's Gospel was written in good, grade-school level Greek. His grammar was correct, but simple. At the other end of the scale, Paul's mastery of Greek was legendary. He knew it well enough to make up his own words by combining other words and they would be understood quite clearly.

Matthew may well have composed his first draft in Aramaic, since his approach was to appeal to Jewish minds. Yet, there were very many Jews born in foreign countries who grew up speaking some other local language. Since they knew only a smattering of Aramaic ritual terms, Matthew's Gospel would have a far better distribution in Greek. Greek was at least the second language everyone learned in that part of the world, if not their native tongue. There is no reason to believe Matthew had to have help translating his Gospel. Romans had long since learned to use Greek as an official language, since most of their empire had learned it under the aggressive tutelage of their predecessors, the Greeks who conquered under Alexander the Great. It was much more convenient simply to use the current common speech of their empire than to demand everyone learn Latin. Doing business with Roman bureaucrats would require knowledge of Greek, and Matthew had been a tax-collector for Rome, one of the hated publicans.

Still, we are on somewhat shaky ground if we try making too much of the precise words which appear in our Greek text of Matthew, especially where the words of Jesus are recorded. We are reading a _targum_. Some scholars have attempted to translate back into Aramaic, but I believe they would be on even shakier ground, for the most part. This has nothing to do with assumptions about the quality of the textual sources themselves. Such questions require whole books to answer, or at least whole websites (and there are several).

With all that in mind, we are still generally safe in assuming Matthew did very conscientiously apply himself to the task of expressing in Greek his best understanding of what Jesus had said in Aramaic and the same goes for the other Gospels. I am firmly convinced what we have is what God intended, while not forgetting it was further translated into our English.

Jesus was giving an image of how His followers should live. They ought to pass through as a habit the gate which is tight and narrow. This is no call to asceticism, wherein the principle seems always making things harder than they have to be. Rather, it is a warning of comparison. The gospel requires big changes. If the path is all too easy, making no demands on the one who passes through, then it's suspect. If everyone is doing it, that's a sure sign it's probably wrong.

Human nature takes the path of least resistance. Following God surely puts demands on you, and requires you often do what does not come naturally. So stop and think; take a look at where your spiritual steps are carrying you. Don't ever completely relax on this issue. Examine everything in light of God's calling on your life. Acting reflexively can destroy everything God wants for you. Accepting the discomfort – and sometimes, downright weirdness – of what comes from following Jesus should become our norm.

Those who read in this verse a strong pronouncement condemning the majority of humanity to Hell are missing the point. The concept of the masses is not the focus, but their presence is a symptom of the problem. This is about making the difficult choices every day, and getting used to being different from the folks around you. Don't revel in the difference; don't gloat at their stupidity. Take your alternate path with joy and peaceful humility, knowing some will see your joy and consider joining you.

Chapter 6 - Holy Detectives

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them." (Matthew 7:15-20)

Just moments before this passage, Jesus had warned against judging others harshly (7:1ff). Whatever He meant by that, He did not intend we should simply treat everyone as an angel from God. In this specific case, we are to be on guard against anyone who claims to be a fellow believer, and wants our support for their projects.

While Jesus specifically names those who claim to be prophets, I'm confident it's no stretch to say this applies to spiritual leadership in general. A prophet in Jesus' day was just about anyone who claimed to have a message from God, demanding folks should hear their message and take appropriate action. The setup for guarding against those who make this claim falsely is the previous paragraph, where Jesus describes His teaching as a narrow and difficult path.

Therefore, taking into account Jesus' warning we should not take ourselves too seriously, and we should expect all this to be challenging, in proper humility we are to consider the threat from those who would deceive and mislead. What motive could there be for such a thing? Most of the time, they are not as diabolical as our first instincts would have us think. For Jesus to call them "ravenous wolves" is not painting them as knowingly Satanic in intent. Wolves are not necessarily evil, just hungry.

Most false prophets are hungry for attention, power, control, money, or any number of other things they value. They aren't driven by a sense of calling to God's purpose. Even recognizing this, things are far from simple. The false prophets may indeed have been called by God and gotten off track. Their motives may include a genuine desire to see God's People in a better state. They may genuinely love the brothers and sisters, and they may well be truly born-again. Indeed, motives are merely inferred, as only the Lord truly reads the hearts of man.

Thus, we come to the whole point of this parable. We do not see the workings of someone else's soul. Discerning of spirits is not like magic, where you get a tingling in your spine or something equally peculiar. That's more likely to be simple human emotions in action. God forbid we should let our emotions lead us. True spiritual discernment is a matter of taking the whole picture, including whatever messages God may give in one's spirit, however it is He does so with each of His servants (Philippians 2:12). It most certainly must take into account the clear Word of Scripture, which is what we have here: You will discern potential leaders by the result of God's Word working in their lives.

We need not examine in detail here what all that means; sufficient it is to refer to Paul's examination of the matter in Galatians 5:16-26. Given the assumption we know what fruit of the Spirit looks like, we are in a position to discern wolves from shepherds. Everyone claiming to speak for God had better get used to the idea of being examined, and taking it with good grace. Indeed, as one who seeks opportunities for spiritual leadership, few things are more frightening for me than encountering a group which embraces me without checking me out. It causes me to wonder if it is _they_ who are all wolves in sheep's clothing.

When a leadership candidate exhibits mixed fruit, perhaps they can benefit from encouragement. Otherwise, we will most often find there will be a preponderance of spiritual evidence whether they are someone we can work with, or someone whose passions cannot be trusted. We need not pull out the proverbial swords unless folks turn feral on us, blatantly seeking to destroy. The Body at hand should simply quarantine the threat, and go on under the assumption they may in future days heal and be useful.

You and I know that today's sheep herding dogs are but a few bits of DNA away from the ravenous wolves which once devoured sheep. While that may not have been in Jesus' mind at the time, I'm sure He would have tempered taking this parable too far by pointing to the context in which it was given, beginning with "Judge not, lest you be judged." The gospel message includes noting the nature of fallen man, and the great need of redemption. Our responsibility is to take the action appropriate for the moment, redeeming the times, and turning the moment to His glory. By His power, He can enable us to fend off those who cannot be trusted. By His power, He can also turn today's wolf into tomorrow's sheep dog.

Chapter 7 - New Life in Old Forms

Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?"

And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matthew 9:14-17)

Few Christian groups can have an ugly argument like Baptists can. Born with open democracy, Baptist groups are known for some of the most horrendous behavior when confronting their own kind over things other believers regard as relatively minor. The reason I can say this is that I was a Southern Baptist for the first half of my life. I am still amazed at the sorts of things people consider so important they would destroy the life of a fellow church member. This is nothing of which to be proud.

It can be argued those most guilty of such unchristlike displays are almost surely not true believers, but simply possess great influence in the local church. That is hardly an excuse, since it is still shameful how such people are permitted to gain that power. They bring into the church body the same combative incivility we might expect from corrupt union bosses, greedy business managers, or political leaders. That's because disputes are usually about money or power.

Sometimes it's something simply visceral. One issue over which I've seen some of the most idiotic disputes is the consumption of beverage alcohol. It's important to note the American Prohibitionist sentiment is pretty much a joke elsewhere in the world. One can find some support for it in the UK, but not much anywhere else. The short history lesson is this: American Baptists were born from the same stock as the social work movement, when it first appeared in England. It rose as a response to the drunken squalor one found in the cramped warrens of company housing built from scratch by coal mine operations. Major coal deposits were found away from any cities where housing was usually to be found. The miners and their families in this company housing were ripe for every human ill, and abuse of alcohol (sold at the company store) was prominent.

Everyone agrees alcohol abuse is harmful in every way. But only a fool who knows no history, and very little of the Bible, will deny the Law of Moses permitted Jews to consume fermented grape juice which contained alcohol. It was rare to find any fruit of the vine which was _not_ fermented, since it only lasted a day or two in a world without refrigeration. Let's stop being silly: Jesus drank fermented wine like every other Jew. That has little bearing on whether we ought to avoid it today. Jesus did a lot of things we would never do in modern times.

What makes the issue so ugly and contentious is guilt from something truly evil: bringing worldly ways into the Household of God. Not the alcohol consumption, but the political maneuvering is what has no place. Trying to force the old fallen life to fit into our New Covenant in Jesus' Blood is an abomination. Jesus spent an awful lot of time showing how the old rabbinical traditions were just that – traditions not from God. They were not directly connected with the Law of Moses, but were often spurious additions which served no good purpose. Some were indeed sensible; the Feast of Dedication was not commanded by God, yet seemed quite justified. That feast arose after the conquests of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. His successors included some pretty hateful rulers; one of them erected a pagan statue in the Temple in Jerusalem and sacrificed a pig to Zeus on the Altar. Getting all that defilement removed some time later was good cause for an annual commemoration.

But the silly command to fast weekly was just a bit much. John the Baptist followed an even stricter regime, as he belonged to a rather ascetic school of Judaism popular at that time. John's disciples were puzzled when, after John's public endorsement, and after several of his disciples became followers of Jesus, the rules for discipleship were quite different. Jesus and His disciples appeared to be in the party mode by comparison.

From the very beginning, Jesus had been teaching how the Law of Moses was not what the Pharisees often claimed it was. Their empty legalism actually pulled Moses down to a lower level. In the second place, the Law of Noah was an older and higher standard; it had been in force far longer, and Moses was more a specific application of Noah. Third, both were mere reflections of an eternal spiritual standard. Merely correcting the false view of Moses would exclude restrictions of the type they had come to expect, and it was confusing to those who hadn't spent time with Jesus. His answer to John's disciples was attempting to point out the meaning of "radical" – getting back to the root of things. His teaching was both new and ancient, a new expression growing from ancient roots.

Jesus was teaching a New Covenant, a covenant which brought one into an individual relationship with Jehovah. The Covenant of the Moses, while holding individuals accountable, was aimed at the Nation of Israel. It was a national covenant, a subset of Noah's Covenant, which God established for all humanity. This New Covenant Jesus taught brought one into the Kingdom of God, a wholly new entity which embraced Noah's Law and realized God's original intentions at Creation. It was clearly based on all that had gone before; what was equally clear was how it was a totally different kind of thing, because it had never been done on a wide scale.

How could the old traditional forms hold this New Life in the Kingdom? They could not. It was like demanding the friends of the bridegroom fast before the wedding celebration was over. And in ancient times, when cloth was largely hand woven, it had to be washed and dried at least once in order to establish its true size. Patching an old garment with this newly woven fabric was foolish without first washing the patch. Who knows how much and in what direction it would shrink?

It's also as silly as putting new wine into old used wine skins. "New wine" was a specific term, referring to the first blood of the grapes. In order to get the most of what a load of grapes had to offer, they would be tromped in the vat until all that remained was thick slurry. Of the several gallons one might get from a batch, only the first quart or two was of that finest quality, with a much higher sugar content, and fewer solids. It fermented into a rather potent wine, with a fairly high alcohol content. The last drainage of the wine vat came closer to making brackish vinegar – the sort of low-quality stuff issued to soldiers in their rations, and what Jesus was offered while on the Cross.

In the process of fermenting, the better quality stuff released a lot of gases, and only a new wineskin could stretch enough to contain it. Old dry, hardened wineskins had already stretched to their limit. One could put the cheap stuff in there and it might be alright. What Jesus was offering was a totally new level of faith, a higher calling to a close personal communion with God the Father Himself. What the Father gave for the former covenants could not contain this joyful existence. They were tied to a context which had passed. When the personal presence of God comes into the human soul, so very much changes, the old forms break down in the process.

Everything must be wholly re-evaluated. The old ways had to be scrutinized to see if they were useful in the Kingdom. Naturally, some things would carry over, as they had always pointed back to the ultimate truth. It was the same God. Yet, much would not be useful. Paul referred to the process as "rightly dividing the Word" (2 Timothy 2:15). One had to know God the Person in order to discern what parts of Moses applied, and how they applied. One had to understand the purpose of those provisions. So the old allowance for divorce was tossed aside (Deuteronomy 24:1 and Mark 10:1-12), but the command to love took center place (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:34-40).

What held good for John the Baptist was not sufficient to serve Christ the King. What is in our lives prior to Christ is subject wholly to His judgment, whether it shall go, stay, or be changed. Bitter fighting over silly, petty disputes does not belong in the Kingdom. We have the power to love those with whom we disagree. If we cannot act in love, we do not know Jesus.

Chapter 8 - Worthy of All Sacrifice

"Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all the he had and bought it." (Matthew 13:44-46)

A few verses before this, Jesus showed clearly He had a purpose in using parables for teaching. It was not enough to say simply He was fulfilling prophecy, but the prophecy itself gave meaning to His method (verses 35-35). The prophet (Asaph; Psalm 78) was speaking of a people who had worked hard to avoid hearing the voice of God, and did all they could to keep from obeying Him. This being their choice, when something _very_ good came from God – His own natural Son – they would not even realize it. But to those who were willing to listen, because they had already built up a concern for what God thought about things, parables would be a marvelous means of revelation.

Those who see in Jesus' response to His disciples a bit of impatience are probably right (Matthew 15:16ff). In a short time, the whole of the gospel would be committed into their hands. If they couldn't comprehend the basic issues of the gospel message, what did that bode for the future? Sometimes He explained what the stories meant, making clear in the process it wasn't as cryptic as they seemed to think. It was simply a matter of getting used to the imagery already used in the Old Testament, but apparently forgotten since those days. His impatience arose from their failure to make the break from the false teachings of their day.

Then, to test whether they were beginning to grasp the concept, He hit them with two more parables, which were actually one basic idea: _What should it be worth a man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?_

We don't know what the first man was doing in the field, nor does it matter. He was going about whatever business he had, and stumbled upon this something valuable. Indeed, it was so valuable to him he hid it carefully, went off to dispose of all his property, and bought the field as quickly as he could. Obviously, whatever he had found was worth more than what the man already owned. Don't get hung up on the man's effort to hide what he found. That's just part of the story, so it would make sense. The point is, the man found it by accident. He was willing to lose all he had to get possession of what he found.

The second man was not simply bumbling along; he was a seeker. He was already in the business of treasures, specializing in pearls. He always had his eye open for that one magnificent pearl. Eventually, he found it. Just as the man in the other story, he disposed of all he owned to be sure he could get that one special pearl. Never mind why he wanted it; just note he had consciously been seeking it. Again, the man was willing to set aside all he had to take possession of it.

We all come to Christ differently. We could survey all the factors we could think of, and build nice categories for analysis, and maybe even have an interesting discussion about the various ways people come to Christ. Here, Jesus divides them into two extremes: those who are not seeking, and those who are. Some go through life with hardly a care in the world, just doing whatever seems to make sense at the moment. Others are driven, living with a purpose, pursuing a concrete plan. Together they represent every kind of person between their extremes. Both of these folks came up against the moment when Truth stands before them, plain as day.

So it is with each of us. Whether we know to seek an answer to life or are content simply to live it, we have that moment when God touches our world. If we know what that touch is, we know we have found all we could ever desire. That's not the same as all the stuff sinners wish for, and perhaps get, but what we truly need. Perhaps simply realizing finally what we are and what we need is at least half the blessing. It's so precious, no one bothers to put a price on it, or say what it might be worth. Neither did Jesus in telling His little stories.

What mattered was the punch line of both: They had to surrender everything they had. Don't fail to notice they did it with joy. They were delighted at such a good bargain; they could hardly care what they were giving up. Jesus intentionally leaves out whether each man was rich or poor. We know only how they had to dispose of _everything_. So it is with the Kingdom. You want in? Shed everything you have, everything you are, all you ever hoped, etc. Give it up, because you can't keep any of it. Indeed, there shouldn't be any conflict at all. This is your one opportunity to have it all; what a marvelous prospect!

Anyone who longs for a return to what they had before they met Christ doesn't understand what they've been given. We could allege they never even got Him at all. Nothing else in all our existence holds a candle to the bright sun of the Son, and the light of His Truth shining into and out of our souls.

Chapter 9 - Casting Aside Your Burdens

"Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23-24)

Progress in the technology of defending a city did not change much up to Jesus' time on earth. What cities could do in the first century AD to limit vulnerability to attack was just about the same as it was in Abraham's day, back around 2100 BC.

One method goes back so far we can't say for sure where or when it was introduced. That method was simply to disarm anyone coming into the city. Ancient weapons and armor were bulky, and easy to see. Any weapon which could be hidden in one's clothing – usually a dagger – wasn't too threatening when just about everyone had one. If the local guards alone had armor and bigger weapons, it gave them a serious advantage against a larger group of enemies with mere knives.

At the same time, a city could not simply stay locked up tight. It was the nature of a city that no significant food was grown inside the walls. It had to be brought in by traders, along with all sorts of other goods. The traders would surely come, because where else could one find such a convenient market? The trick was to allow normal trade and traffic while preventing importation of anything which threatened the current government.

Thus, during peacetime it was enough to casually inspect traffic at the city gates, with the occasional random search of animal loads and so forth. That's pretty much the equivalent of methods used today, even on many military bases. If things get unsettled, or if the city in question is under some persistent threat, they could tighten things up a bit. The most advanced cities, with good solid walls, would build special portals for the incoming traffic. Humans would have to pass through a gate with a high threshold, narrow in width, and low enough to require most adults to duck a bit. Anyone fully armed would be at a severe disadvantage coming in like that; guards waiting inside could dispatch them easily. In fact, a single guard could hold off a large number of invaders if they all had to come through one at a time.

For loaded animals, there was a separate portal. Since most traveling merchants used camels in that part of the world, portals were made especially for them. That is, the camel could come inside the walls only if it was unloaded and made to crawl in on its knees. Thus, not only did the camel drivers have to coerce the ornery beasts to crawl in, which camels don't like, they had to be ready to carry the whole load in by hand. This allowed for a few guards to conduct a leisurely inspection of the load, making sure no contraband – especially weapons – were brought in.

Any invading force would be better off taking the walls down first, which in itself was no small task. That so many cities took these precautions was part of the price they paid for being a city. Simple economics made cities very desirable to live in, but also made them prime targets for raids.

These tiny protective portals were called "the eye of the needle" as a figure of speech. When Jesus made His comment about how hard it was for the rich to yield to God, He was referring to this well-known security practice. If we were to take this image literally by modern standards, it would mean the rich simply could not be saved. How often have we heard cult leaders using this verse to extort wealth from their followers? The point is not how the wealthy never come to God. It was that they had a much harder time of it. It wasn't just the wealth they had to unload, but the power which came with it.

Consider the opposite side of Jewish society in those days. The average Son of Abraham was rather poor. The middle class in ancient times was only slightly larger in numbers than the wealthy nobility and royalty. The majority of the population lived in varying degrees of poverty. Whom do you suppose was invited to sit on the front row in synagogues? Who had frequent access to cozy rabbinical teaching sessions? Who was allowed to actually get close enough to read and touch the sacred scrolls of the Old Testament books? Certainly not the poor average Joe Jew. They did well to be in a room where they got to hear someone else reading from the Word, though most could themselves read a bit.

Is it any surprise, then, Jesus made so much of the idea the poor had the gospel preached to them? See Matthew 11:15, Luke 4:18 and 7:22. They had little access to God's Word and were left to live in relative ignorance and even silly superstition. For them, there was very little to lose by following Christ. They were already at the bottom of the economy, and were held in contempt by their rulers. It didn't take much persuading for them to shift their loyalty from a government system which hated and abused them to one which brought them directly before God as family. In giving up their all – pitifully little as it was – they had the sure knowledge their sins could be forgiven and know they were worth something to God.

For a poor man to enter the secure city, the "eye of the needle" was no worse than the door to his own home, if he had a door at all. For the man of means, this was a major struggle. He had to divest himself of everything protecting him, everything which gave him power and comfort, everything which made being wealthy worthwhile. He had to crawl humbly and painfully through the tight entrance. The City of God offers more than any of us can comprehend, but the wealthy cannot know of that until they let go of what they have now.

This illustration from Jesus was a response to His encounter with the Rich Young Ruler. Actual wealth was no sin; one of Jesus' closest friends – Lazarus – was never obliged to become poor. Rather, he was expected to use his wealth to promote God's truth.

What will it cost you to enter the City of Heaven?

Chapter 10 - Divine Order

To those raised in the rather corrupt version of Judaism which held sway in Jesus' day, the idea wealth and power were not signs of God's favor came as a shock. Even having been with Jesus quite some months, the Twelve still suffered that false apprehension. So when Jesus dismissed the Rich Young Ruler as not worthy of salvation, the disciples were stunned. If those "so obviously blessed of God" were not going to see Heaven, who in this world could be saved? (Matthew 19:25ff)

Jesus' answer was cryptic only to our modern Western ears. It would be another way of saying salvation had nothing to do with human efforts, but was wholly the work of God. Furthermore, God could save anyone He found worthy, regardless of what His People thought of them.

Still struggling past yet another earthquake in his worldview, Peter noted he and his fellow disciples had left all they owned, and some of them had quite a bit of property. This question was not as obtuse at it seems. Peter was floundering for a firm mental footing, and wanted to know what it was "salvation" meant if not the equivalent of the Old Covenant concept of _shalom_ : protection from enemies, material prosperity, and long life. The disciples were unable to see how those things were not the salvation itself, but were mere symbols of the real blessings of God.

To paraphrase Jesus' answer:

"Do you think that young nobleman had power? Let me tell you about real power! Think of the End Times, when God judges all humanity. I will be seated on the Throne of Heaven. Those of you following Me today will be allowed to sit in judgment over the Twelve Tribes of Israel, because you are the firstfruits of Israel under the New Covenant. And anyone else who abandons their old life to follow Me into the New Life will have so very much more than they left behind, truly Eternal Life.

"But let Me warn you: the Kingdom of Heaven does not operate on a human scale of value, especially when it comes to justice..."

Then He continues by telling the Parable of the Vineyard Workers (Matthew 20:1-16). When harvest time came to the vineyards, the regular crew of caretakers had nowhere near enough hands to get the crop in before the grapes began to rot. Grape harvest was the best opportunity for the poor-but-able-bodied to make some good money. By tradition, they would gather in the public market square. Anyone needing a day crew would hire as many as they needed, and usually all they could get. The standard wage for what was basically unskilled labor was in Jesus' time a denarius.

A particularly anxious vineyard owner might return to the market place more than once to see if any other laborers showed up. In this story, the owner went at sunrise, 9AM, noon, 3PM and a last time at 5PM, when there was only an hour left in the traditional workday. Each time, he hired whomever he found for a full day's pay. When the workday ended at 6PM, the owner called those hired last and gave them the agreed amount. And so it went until he came to those hired at sunrise.

A few dared to grumble that the owner did not pay on a sliding scale, offering more to those who had worked a full day. They felt cheated. Their complaint was wholly unjustified. The owner said each was paid what was agreed. "What difference is it to you if I am generous to these last?" The few who dared to grumble were afflicted with the wrong attitude. They had nothing in the first place. Because of the owner's desire to have an efficient harvest, he was willing to offer a reasonable portion of his wealth to those who fulfilled his purpose. Otherwise, they were at the mercy of popular charity, which seldom amounted to much. A denarius is as much as a man might beg in a week.

We come into this world, and in so doing are tainted with sin. We all deserve a short, painful life, a horrid prolonged death, followed by eternity in Hell. God in His mercy offered a way past this in the covenants of Noah and Moses. They took care of this life's sorrows, and opened the door to blessings far higher, blessings so rich and generous all the earthly stuff was of no consequence. In Christ the offer is restated and clarified. Some He will call early and they will carry the load of Kingdom work for all but the first few years of their lives. Others will respond late in life, barely making it into the arms of Jesus before their bodies expire. Once dead, who can explain what awaits them? All we have is the promise it will be far better than any can describe. It's enough to know we are allowed in the gate.

Those who somehow conclude their long life of Kingdom service was a burden and an imposition have forgotten whence they came. If faithfulness is not its own crown, what reward can God offer? Would any dare to grumble that God is unfair in giving Eternal Life to those who have wasted all but their last moments in the pleasures of wickedness? If God were simply and coldly just, there would have been no Jesus come to save from sin, early or late, nor even a Covenant of Noah.

Those who focus on what they can get in human terms understand neither God nor His Creation. They have no clue how things work. We cannot afford to become trapped in seeking wealth and power on this earth. What we need will be granted for the service to which we are called. God decides who gets what, and we rejoice we are included. We rejoice when anyone else is included, never mind what they appear to have paid for the privilege. Naturally, those who just made it in the door at the last minute would feel so very fortunate. So by human standards, the last will be first, and the first will be last.

What would be the Kingdom standard? Whose reward and opportunity was the best? A life-long sacrifice for Christ is its own reward.

Chapter 11 - The Institution Can Fail

There's no way to make this lesson short, so buckle your seatbelts and hang on.

Somewhere between "abject submission" and "absolute contempt", we can find a godly attitude about the organized Body of Believers commonly called "The Church." Protestants are not referring to any particular earthly institution when we say "The Church." It only gets confusing when our audience includes Catholics or Eastern Orthodox believers. For both of those groups, and a few others, "The Church" means _their_ church organization. Indeed, the reason there is such a thing as Protestants is a perception by some individuals well-placed in human history that the institutional organization had failed, and it was time to start over, building a new organization. We call that period in history, when the outcasts were hugely successful in building a new church structure, "the Reformation."

Depending on whom you ask, we could say that period in history ran from the early 1500s, lasting about 100 years. The complaint of the Reformers was the official Church had become hopelessly corrupt, and had long since left behind the simple faith and practice of the believers of the New Testament era. A great deal of pagan belief and ritual had been brought in, and the leadership was a carefully closed system which never officially admitted even the slightest mistake.

Oddly, so it seems from our perspective, the Reformers never addressed the underlying cause of this corruption: mixing church and politics. Many things the Reformers pointed out as evil in the Church hierarchy were but symptoms of this one error. It began as a good thing, where the government supported the Church. First, the government extended official recognition to the followers of Jesus as a tolerated religion. It became illegal to harass Christians simply for being Christian around AD 300.

Over the century following, the rulers came to realize what a marvelous, unifying force this religion was. One prince decided to unite his army under one of its symbols – the Cross – and was victorious in his dispute over who should become the next Roman Emperor: Constantine. Having gained his throne by such use of Christianity, he decided to make this the official religion, giving Christianity the highest status over all other religions. This, while secretly maintaining his worship of the sun god.

In the heady days shortly thereafter, the church leaders around the empire became greatly unified, developing a sort of political hierarchy of their own. At first, they were very cautious and responsible in exercising their new power. They stamped out some very popular heresies, collected enough money to produce far more copies of the Bible, built nicer church buildings, etc. Meanwhile, they had to play nice with their new chief supporter, the emperor. He expressed ever new wishes for things which seemed at first harmless, but eventually compromised the church leadership. In just a few centuries, the interplay between government and church made both little more than extensions of the other. For the most part, it was the government which changed the Church.

There are a lot of parallels here between the Reformers and Jesus. In His time, the official religion had become so corrupt and political it no longer bore any resemblance to the system Moses described in his writings, which we call "the Pentateuch" (the first five books of the Old Testament). Over the centuries, the leadership connected with the Temple built up a massive collection of interpretive precedents in what Moses may or may not have intended when the Covenant of the Law was written and published in about 1400 BC. When Jerusalem was captured and destroyed about 900 years later, the bulk of Judean population was taken into exile. While there in a foreign land, the power of the religious leadership became centered on the institution of the synagogue, which became somewhat the model for the Christian Church later.

The accretion of new layers of interpretive rules continued, and more and more of the leadership system became rigid, swathed in this mass of oral interpretive tradition. When the Jews were allowed to return home after some 70 years in exile, they rebuilt the Temple, and with it the iron bureaucracy. Over the next 500 years, various conquering empires came and went, each inflicting its own peculiar sickness on the Temple hierarchy. When Rome came, they simply carried on where others had left off. They found two entrenched political factions. One was liberal, wealthy and elite priests, ruling for the most part. The other was hide-bound conservative, and much closer to the people, and quite troublesome to Roman government. Naturally, Rome made sure the liberal elites – the Sadducees – remained in control. The Sadducees would deal; they could be bought.

The conservative Pharisees maintained their hold on the people by their claim to be true to Moses, to the letter of his Law. For them, this was The Law of God for all mankind. Sadly, they were mistaken. Much of what Jesus had to say in His teaching was a reaction to this false interpretation of Moses. Naturally, He had many harsh words for those who upheld the system blindly, because their motives were clearly selfish. Whatever it was they were seeking, it wasn't the heart of God.

In two parables, The Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) and the Wicked Vinedressers (Matthew 21:33-41), Jesus was pointedly criticizing the religious leaders of His day, which was also the first level of government Jews faced. These leaders did not miss the point of these parables in the least. They were enraged, and wanted very much to arrest Him, but were held back by His popularity.

In the Two Sons, Jesus shows how no one is too good to repent. Those who recognize their sin and put their hands to making amends are closer to the heart of God than those who are smugly self-righteous. In the Vinedressers, Jesus points out how the religious leaders stood in the place of their predecessors, those who had rejected every prophet now officially honored. Even more infuriating, He was clearly referring to Himself as the Son of God. They had already worked out to the last detail what the Son of God would be like, a collection of ideas together called now "the Messianic Expectations." Jesus matched none of those things, so He was clearly insulting God. Of course, they equated their perceptions with those of God; in this, _they_ were the blasphemers.

It is an inescapable truth, evidenced throughout history, that nothing true and noble can long withstand the ravages of organization. A revolt which transitions to a stable institution becomes the establishment, no longer a revolt. Whatever else we may say of him, Thomas Jefferson was probably correct in a certain sense when he said the tree of liberty could only be prospered by frequent applications of the blood of tyrants, and a popular revolt should come every few decades, to keep human liberty alive (in his letter to William Smith from Paris, 13 November 1787). It was a gruesome way of recognizing the need for constant renewal, for frequently returning to the roots of what makes life worth living. Sadly, Jefferson meant it literally. I can't imagine Jesus' warning calls for periodic murder of our leadership. Against the necessity of constant renewal stands the human need for stability.

While there is no sin in finding comfort in our traditions, we should never become too comfortable. Our real anchor is the person of Jesus Christ, not some institutionalized expression of His teaching, statically linked to some forgotten historical context. Let us never forget: While God does not change, what He intends to use in one place and time may not be right in another. Nor do we glorify change for its own sake. We glorify God, and walk in the light He gives, wherever He gives it. No organization is sacred in itself. There will always be a church, and it will have varying degrees of human organization, because such is His chosen instrument. He has always worked through His people gathered in one heart of devotion to Him. Yet the very moment it becomes organized, it has already begun moving away from the simple purity of relying on His Spirit for fresh guidance.

This is one of the many paradoxes of God. In this fallen world, we can never be truly at rest. Where sin exists, life will be stormy. The storm is not the thing on which we focus, but we focus on Jesus while in the storm. We can, like Peter, walk out on the water to meet Jesus in that storm. Or we can, also like Peter, pay attention to the circumstances and sink below the waves.

Chapter 12 - Christ's Wedding Feast

Of all the parables I've seen abused and twisted, this one seems to get it the most. We find in Matthew 22:1-14 Jesus is yet again hammering the Jewish leadership. Whether this story came on the same day as the events recorded in chapter 21 doesn't matter. For Matthew, the incident is connected to those events in the previous chapter by continuing the same message. It was Jesus' answer to their attempt to arrest Him, whether given immediately, or sometime later.

In the Ancient Near East, the wedding of the king's son was typically combined with vesting him for co-regency. Royal weddings, like other festal occasions for which kings might make specific invitations, would be published twice. First, when the date is determined, there is something of a royal decree. The invitation is really a summons, since only under extreme circumstances would those worthy of the king's company dare to decline such a high duty. Second, the king would send messengers to each on the hour when they should depart for the palace. The messenger was a guide and escort, among other things, to insure none dared hinder the guest for frivolous reasons. They were on the king's business.

That anyone should dare to ignore this summons in going about their daily business is more than an insult; it was treason. This was both a wedding and vestment of heir ceremony. They were obliged to present their allegiance to the new ruler. Refusing to appear would justify the offender's imprisonment or execution, and confiscation of all their property. Daring to beat or kill the royal messengers was an even greater provocation.

Jesus was plainly saying He was God's Son, and the Father had invited the Jews to the wedding and coronation of the Messiah. Don't get hung up on the image of the Bride of Christ, because that does not figure in here. She is not even mentioned. The image is one where the Jews are summoned to honor their Lord. They were summoned by various messengers called prophets. The Jews ignored some, persecuted some, and killed others. Educated Pharisees would have caught this immediately. They seemed to have remained sensitive to the accusation they had inherited the guilt of their forefathers for rejecting the very prophets now honored. These prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah. When the time finally arrives for them to enter into this new Kingdom, they refuse.

Obviously, the King – God Almighty – was furious at this rejection of His Son. Here, Jesus makes an outright prophecy: The Lord would send an army to do His bidding, and destroy once and for all the Temple and Jerusalem. In AD 70, the Roman general Titus descended on Zion and laid siege. The precipitating cause was the Jews had rebelled against Rome. After breaking through and taking control, the Temple was dismantled stone by stone, and the rubble was scattered around the various valleys near the city. Everything that could be burned was reduced to ashes, and all the golden furnishings of the Temple were paraded as plunder through the streets of Rome.

The Father had set the time for His Son to be revealed. Since His own people had rejected the invitation to honor Him, the Father sent His messengers to the rest of the world – "into the highways." It mattered not whether they were openly sinful or upright, the Father's invitation of grace is extended to all. Suffering from the same racist nationalism as the young prophet Jonah, the Jewish leaders despised Gentiles, and bristled at the idea God would take anything from His People and give it to other nations. That such an offer also meant no longer having to pass first through the Law was an even greater insult.

It was an ancient tradition for a king to provide proper attire to anyone entering his presence. When we read the story of Joseph in Egypt, we see this in action (Genesis 40:14). "Put on the new man" Paul tells us (Ephesians 4:24), for that is the proper attire for the New Kingdom of Christ. In many places throughout the New Testament, we are told the Lord provides for us the proper raiment for His presence. That there might be a guest at the Wedding who lacks proper clothing is yet another insult to the King, for He had abundantly provided. Those who refuse His offer are not welcome. They may attempt to join in the festivities by joining themselves to a church, but that will not provide the haven they seek. There is no defense for not standing fully robed before the Father:

"So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless.

"Then the king said, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" (Matthew 22:12-13)

What better description could Jesus give for eternity in Hell?

He ends with one of His favorite sayings: "For many are called, but few are chosen" (verse 14). This refers to the Roman military conscription practice. They would invite a given town to put forward their best young men, and the Roman commander would select on a few. Calvinists often make too much of this verse. Here it is simply stated: While the invitation is open to all humanity, most will not meet the terms. Those who do are referred to as "chosen." That's it; there is nothing else to be made of that verse regarding Election.

The main point of the whole parable is the Jews cannot claim to be The Chosen simply because they are Jews, the Children of Abraham. In another place, Jesus reminds the Jewish leaders God could make stones into Children of Abraham (Matthew 3:9). Perhaps He had, since some of those children were so hard-headed. God had indeed chosen them to be the People of the Covenant, but they had repeatedly violated that covenant. When He was ready to wipe the slate clean, by sending His Son to author a fresh covenant in His own blood, they became the ones who shed that blood. When Jesus told this parable, the end was fixed for them. Their identity as His Covenant People, all that they held to as proof of that status, was about to be removed: the Temple, their city (the conquering Titus forbid them to ever enter again), and their freedom to live together (they were scattered, driven out of Judea by persecution).

Not only would the Jews lose their place, but it would be taken by others. In the previous chapter Jesus had said: "Therefore I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it" (Matthew 21:43). That nation would be drawn from every race of mankind. They would become a nation by virtue of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. Their identity would be bound up solely in their bearing the fruit of that Kingdom. Thus, there was to be a new Chosen People.

Chapter 13 - Taken for Judgment

Perhaps you've heard that song written by Larry Norman, "I Wished We'd All Been Ready."

When I first became serious about serving Jesus Christ, it was early in the 1970s. So-called "Jesus Music" was just becoming commercially viable, and a whole generation of song writers put the gospel message to a contemporary beat. Not all of it was true to Scripture, any more than it is with the more recent Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). On top of this, several very famous artists have gotten some unwanted publicity due to scandalous behavior. On the one hand, we each have to ask: How I would do, if my life was under the spotlight? On the other hand, what James says of teachers in the Church (James 3:1) applies equally well to those who stand before crowds claiming to sing for Jesus. Too often CCM is marketing first, and only incidentally biblical.

To my knowledge, Larry Norman wasn't guilty of that. No scandals, no dirty secrets brought to light, not even bad behavior behind the scenes. He was rather strange, but not rude. I first saw Larry in concert where I was attending college at Oklahoma Baptist University. He was taller than average, had pale blond (almost white) straight hair down on his shoulders, wore a brown leather jacket and carried nothing more than an acoustic guitar. He performed his whole concert just like that. I seem to recall he included that old favorite, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready." (Readers should note he died some years ago.)

That concert was about the same time Hal Lindsay had thoroughly established himself as one of the top Christian book writers. The paperback Christian book business was just getting significant. Like most people I knew, I read _Late Great Planet Earth_ , along with a couple of other books by Lindsay. At the time, it all sounded good to me and was highly recommended by people I respected.

In our passage for this lesson, Jesus had just completed a heavy-duty sermon against the Scribes and Pharisees. Tension was high and the anger was palpable. As He and the Twelve were departing the Temple grounds, the disciples were commenting on the beautiful work Herod had done building up and decorating the structure. Herod was a clever architect, and lavished a lot of expense on the project. Very generous, considering he had no legitimate right to go past the Court of Gentiles, despite having been circumcised. Jesus warned His disciples not to get too wrapped in the man-made structure: "Do you see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down" (Matthew 24:2).

Obviously this was a prophecy of future events, events which would be earth-shattering to them as Jews. Having already learned not to argue about it, they asked point blank, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" (verse 3). Jesus answered at length. What follows in the next two chapters are some of the most debated verses in the Bible. Even the fans of Hal Lindsay can't agree precisely on what all this means.

I am no longer a fan of Lindsay. However, I am not about to launch into an attack on him or his theology here. This is about parables and parabolic language, not about eschatology. Out of this long lesson Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives, one image is sorely abused and must be addressed.

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the Flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming." (Matthew 24:36-42)

I have it on good authority Larry was thinking of these verses, or perhaps the parallel passage in Luke 17:34-36, when he wrote that still-popular song. Like most people I know, he thought Jesus was talking about the Rapture. In this he was quite mistaken.

As usual, it's largely corrected by noting the context. Jesus refers to Noah and the Flood (Genesis 6). He talks about how, despite Noah's prophesying, folks just went on with their partying lifestyle. "So will the coming of the Son of Man be" tells us when He comes back, it will be a surprise to those who aren't His followers. That Day will come, and people will be taken away.

Which people will be taken away? In the days of Noah, it was the sinners, those who rejected his message. So it will be when the Son comes – sinners will be taken away. A common phrase in Jewish culture was to be "taken away" with the meaning always in terms of judgment. In Jesus' day it would mean arrest by Roman soldiers or Temple guards. Even today, we hear the television policeman say, "Take `em away and book `em."

I won't fault Larry for taking poetic license in changing the words a bit. "Two men in a field" and "two men walking up a hill" is pretty much the same thing in this context, but "hill" rhymes better with "still." His mistake is in assuming the one taken was whisked off to be with Jesus. That's not what Jesus was saying. He was saying the one taken will be like those caught in the Flood, taken to their just punishment. The one left behind is the survivor, not the person who missed the rapture, as Norman suggests. The ones left alive in the days of Noah were those who heeded the warning. The Flood never took them, because they were protected.

So what's the point? It's enough to note here Jesus warns us we cannot really be "ready" for His return in the sense we will have no unfinished tasks at hand. It will not be convenient for anyone except God. Jesus said, "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." (Matthew 24:44)

How can we be ready? How did Noah and his family get ready? They obeyed the Word of God, and went about the task given. The rains did not fall just as they finished; they were in that huge land-locked ship for seven days before the flood came (Genesis 7:10). The task for those of us following Jesus is in the next parable He gives, Matthew 24:45-51. This one has caused little difficulty for most people. The Unfaithful Steward is pretty obvious; it's the Faithful Steward that is the point. He didn't try to guess the time his master would return, and so make any special preparations to impress him. He simply did what he would have done had the master been there all along, looking over his shoulder.

That's what Jesus expects of us. It's not a matter of trying to calculate this or that subtle hint in Scripture, and setting forth probable dates. It's not about symmetry in the number of years in each Dispensation. It's not about whether you will have a chance to accomplish anything in particular in your life before He returns. It's about living everyday the same as if He were here now, watching over your shoulder. He _is_ , you know.

Chapter 14 - Self-appointed Fools

Very early in Jesus' ministry, He stayed mostly in Galilee. People came from all over that part of the world to see Him. With all the crowds constantly following Him around, it must have been at times quite maddening. While the Twelve got enough of it very early on, even Jesus found He, too, had to escape once in awhile. On the day after selecting the Twelve and giving them His power over sickness and demons, followed by their ecstatic report later, they all went back to their headquarters in Capernaum. But the crowd followed them, even into the house where they were staying.

Jesus' family decided He had quite lost His mind, and were trying to rescue Him from the mob of needy folks. As these relatives made their way toward the house, they crossed paths with a deputation of scribes, sent from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus and His activities. This deputation, upon hearing this talk Jesus was perhaps not in His right mind, chimed in:

"He has Beelzebub," and "By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons."

So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house." (Mark 3:22-27)

The rabbis had it all figured out. They had studied the Hebrew Scriptures to death, and were absolutely certain they had it all nailed down. They knew precisely what the Messiah would be like, where he would come from, what sorts of things he would say, what he would do – the Messianic Expectations. They were equally certain he would include them into his new kingdom on earth as the leaders of The People of God, and that all the Gentiles would be made slaves. They had quite a large body of work demonstrating how these things simply must be.

Most Rabbis were members of the Pharisees, as were most scribes. The scribes were men who trained for their status as lawyers by engaging in several years of copying the Scriptures, particularly the Torah. Make enough copies, and a man could memorize a great deal of it. In the process, they would rely on established word counts, letter counts, etc. It was all down to a fine science; it produced a steady stream of educated men, as well as insuring replacements when a scroll of Scripture aged to the point of falling apart. This system of copying offered a tremendous degree of accuracy and fidelity to the original sacred texts.

For these men, it was a passion to guard the body of truth from any attack, no matter how subtle. Every teaching rabbi, especially if he was popular, was investigated by scribes. Those who didn't pass muster were at the very least publicly discredited. Preliminary attempts to do that to Jesus had failed, because this was not just a popular teacher – this one did real miracles. To the average working-class Jew, such was pretty persuasive proof God Almighty was behind His teaching, and typically raised some anticipation this could be the Messiah. While the Pharisees wanted as much as anybody to see the Messiah appear, they were always on a hair trigger because such talk might get Roman attention.

A significant portion of Jesus' miracles were in the form of delivering folks from the oppression of demons. We know little of that today, but the scribes sent to investigate weren't arguing it was fake, only that they were certain this rabbi was not from God. He didn't follow the prescribed lesson plans of the rabbinical colleges, and He dared to speak without referring to some established expert. Worst of all, He rejected their well-established interpretations. For all their memorization of Moses, they gave precedence to the Talmud, a body of Hellenistic analysis applied to Hebrew Scripture. It closed their minds to what Moses actually had to say. Their twisted understanding forced them to look for some other explanation of His power.

So they declared He was using the power of demons to control the demons and that He was operating from within the demonic chain of command. His personal demon was _Beelzebub_ – a nickname for Satan, taken from a Canaanite deity. Thus, Jesus was possessed of Satan himself.

Jesus wasted no time in responding to this. He called the scribes into the house and asked them how they could suggest such a thing. Their own brand of Hellenistic logic alone was enough to make it false. Satan was not in the business of setting people free from his power by ordering his demons out of people. The very idea was silly. The only way a demon could be dispatched was for someone to have a higher authority than even Satan. That could only be God. Thus, Jesus was asserting once again He was from God, and used God's power. The proof was in the results of that power.

Satan can do no good thing. He might well at times appear to do something which might be called "good" by most people, but only if he can gain an even greater evil by it. The purpose would be deception. And even then, what "good" he brought would certainly turn out to be evil soon enough. Satan can only pervert what God does. It might be accurate enough to say _Satan has no authority to do good._

Of course, the scribes may have had another motive in all this: Jesus' teaching of Moses was a threat to the system which made life so pleasant for them. If what Jesus taught was true, and if He was the Messiah, they were in big trouble. The whole structure of Jewish society at that time was at risk of being destroyed, and their comfortable situation was about to disappear. All the more so was there a threat to the Temple bureaucracy which employed these scribes.

Either way, their suggestion Jesus worked from Satan's power, and not from God's, was crossing way over the line. It wasn't just a matter of them making fools of themselves in front of a man who could argue circles around them any time and every time, whether by their own logical rules or by Hebraic symbolic logic. They were at risk of finding themselves under God's wrath permanently, with no opportunity of repentance.

Here they were, witnessing the very hand of God at work in the lives of people for whom the Temple hierarchy cared nothing. Folks were set free from the terror of living with evil powers which used them like cheap toys; they were relieved of debilitating infirmities. Best of all, they were hearing the Word of God. If the scribes were so far from God they could look at His handiwork and declare it the product of demons, there was no hope for them. Jesus warned them:

"Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation" – because they said, "He has an unclean spirit." (Mark 3:28-30)

What the scribes had said was blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, which was the Spirit in Jesus. It was the literal presence of this Holy Spirit which made the miracles possible. To declare His work evil was an expression of contempt which was unforgivable. It takes a really hardened heart to do that. These men were not defending the God of their fathers, Jehovah. They were fighting for some other god.

This is the Unpardonable Sin or blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. To "blaspheme" is to express contempt for God, either by talking bad about Him, or by claiming His attributes for yourself. You can talk bad about the Father; He will forgive you. You can bad-mouth Jesus, and if you change your mind later, He'll still embrace you. But you can't show contempt for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. If you can declare His good as satanic, you can never go back.

I've heard and read no end of speculation on what the Unpardonable Sin is, and heard folks express worries about it. The best answer is this: _If you are worried about it, you didn't do it._ If you can fear God's wrath, you are still safe. If you are already a believer, you most certainly haven't, and won't, commit that sin. The Holy Spirit living inside you will prevent that level of bitterness.

Chapter 15 - Can't Please `Em

How many of us have ever had a friend who just had to have their own way? Not merely in most things, but _everything_? I've known people like that. In truth, there is a time in our lives when just about all of us are like that. It's a phase of human development, something we leave in middle childhood. We go through our early lives as if our thoughts are the world's thoughts. You'll see it most often when some six-year-old says of a puppy, "He wants me to hold him." As if he really knew what the puppy wanted – actually he has no capacity for processing the idea that a puppy might want anything he didn't want for it. Children only have room for recognizing their own feelings.

Eventually, they confront reality when playing with other kids. These other kids don't always go along with everything. At first might complain, "They aren't very nice." If they continue through life focused only on their own inner voice, they will never be nice themselves. They simply will not develop the capacity to imagine what it's like to – as the song says – "walk a mile in my shoes." The capacity to see both sides of a debate at the same time, to make allowances for others to see things differently without the reflex to label it "evil," these are marks of adulthood.

It doesn't require the sort of self denial where one has no internally generated opinions, a sponge which absorbs everything and always does what they are told. Rather, it requires merely a willingness to step outside oneself for brief periods. We must learn we, too, can be a real problem for others, and to sense somewhat the pain we cause others. It's called "having a conscience." We decide the other beings around us deserve some consideration, and we try to offer some measure of accommodation, even to our loss at times.

Those of us who get it, whose conscience works reasonably well, find we really don't lose all that much. There's a big payoff in finding a majority of those around us are more likely to give in to us when it's our turn, when there is something we really need, not just vaguely desire. Once we've learned this social skill, we have also pretty much learned when we must be inflexible. There are some things on which we simply cannot compromise. It's asking too much. In this, too, we are actually doing something beneficial for others – we are firm in something connected to universal consequences, the big picture, maybe even Eternity.

And the Lord said, "To what shall I liken the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, saying:

'We played the flute for you,  
And you did not dance.  
We mourned to you,  
And you did not weep.'" (Luke 7:31-32)

Jesus' illustration was about the scribes and Pharisees. They were the ones who had clustered around John the Baptist, too, but in the end rejected his message. Luke tells us the sinners who took the opportunity to repent under John's ministry were a glory to God. Those of the Jewish leadership who had rejected John's message were rejecting God, in reality.

Everything had to be the Pharisees' way. If anything confronted them which didn't fit into their nice, neat categories, it must be wrong. They had God figured out, and no one was permitted to question those assigned boundaries. That was the same as questioning God, in their eyes. What it really meant was God was not allowed to work outside their boundaries. "Now, now, Lord, get back in Your box."

They were like children who never quite grew up. If someone saw God in a way they didn't, then he simply could not be seeing God. They had no capacity to see God from any different perspective than their own. They reminded Jesus of those brats in the marketplace (the playground of ancient times) who insisted everyone else play whatever game they wanted to play. If they felt like playing wedding, the other kids had better be ready to dance. If they felt like playing funeral, the other kids had better have tears in their eyes.

John the Baptist came along, virtually reciting the Old Testament, but was rejected because he didn't wear the first-century version of a suit and tie. Instead, John followed a strict regimen of self-denial, avoiding anything which might be mistaken for luxury. Oddly, his recommendations for repentance were fairly moderate, not demanding folks take up his personal habits. But because he was so ascetic, the Pharisees said he had a demon, he was a madman.

By comparison, Jesus lived a fairly easy life. He went to weddings, He slept in houses, accepted the generous gifts offered by rich folks, and hung out with the laid-back types who knew they couldn't impress anybody. He quoted more of the Old Testament than John the Baptist did, and was quite popular in how He taught. He was everybody's friend. The Pharisees called Him a drunk and a glutton, said He hung out with sinners.

Yet it was clear to anyone outside the elite hierarchy how both of these men were serving God. John had called Jesus the Lamb of God, and Jesus had said John was the greatest prophet who ever lived. Both very obviously cared deeply about people, and made a genuine effort to lead them closer to God. They were opposites in many ways, yet on the same side. The contrast pointed to a holiness which the Pharisees could never grasp, much less match.

Chapter 16 - Public Privacy

Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee's house, and reclined to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus reclined at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. (Luke 7:36-38)

Most of us today simply cannot picture this scene. Luke took for granted we would recognize the various hints in the description and have no trouble seeing it. Luke was a Gentile, probably Greek, and most scholars agree he wrote for a Gentile audience. Rome had been ruling Greece for at least 300 years at this point, and had injected Roman cultural habits into the remnants of Alexander the Great's old empire.

One of Rome's peculiar cultural habits was in how one ate at mealtime. It was very specific, based on their knowledge of human anatomy, the plumbing of the digestive system. Proper Roman etiquette was to recline on a couch on one's left side. The couch was raised at the head, and the left elbow was propped on this hump. The couch was placed at an angle to the table, the face rather close, so one could eat with the right hand. The foot of the couch extended out away from the table. It was common to bend the knees, which put the feet behind one's back. This was not as cozy as sitting upright, but it allowed space for servers to come and go without the diners having to move. Eastern cultures would also recline, but on big cushions rather close to each other. The Gentile audience would recognize Luke's use of the word "recline" either way.

Readers also knew if the host was among the wealthy elite, and wanted the rest of the world to know it, they would have a dining hall built so that the long rectangular table and couches/cushions occupied a raised central area, with a nice airy, sky-lit ceiling. On each of the two long sides would be a colonnaded hall with a lower ceiling, and somewhat shadowed, perhaps partially obscured by drapes. In these darker halls, the public was allowed to roam freely, as long as they stayed rather quietly in the shadows. It was a public spectacle, where the less fortunate could watch and see all the big shots living the life of luxury, and everyone could see who's who.

It was odd how wealthy Pharisees would mix cultural habits. For the most part, no self-respecting Jewish man would be seen speaking to a woman in public. All the more so if she was a sinner. Almost certainly, the woman in this story was a prostitute. Her presence in the hall was of no consequence, but that she dared to come out of the shadows and touch one of the elite guests was scandalous. Apparently Jesus acted as if it were perfectly normal. Even were she not of ill repute, her expression of devotion was extravagant, and trumped the host's restrained attempt to honor Jesus. The price of her ointment might have easily paid for all the food served at that meal.

"There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?" (Luke 7:41-42)

Reading His host's mind wasn't necessarily a miracle. The self-righteous Pharisee no doubt displayed his thoughts dramatically on his face. The parable itself isn't too hard to understand, if we accept the possibility the Pharisee may have actually accepted Jesus' teachings, on the surface at least. Thus, the Pharisee is represented by the man of little debt – he felt gratitude at having his sins forgiven, but hardly felt there was much to forgive on his account. The prostitute was the hopeless debtor. Her sense of forgiveness could find no words, so great was it (Luke 7:40-47).

Jesus then called attention to the contrast between the host's expressions of gratitude, missing as they were some of the minimal courtesies of that time, versus the overwhelming abundance of the woman's efforts. No one bothers to note what she did was essentially an act of worship, blasphemous in the Jewish mind.

Mark mentions the event, as well (Mark 14:3-9). Having a different purpose in mind, Mark recounts the story from a different angle. Between the two, we get a fairly detailed picture. While Luke mentions Jesus called His host Simon (verse 40), Mark tells us the man was also known as "the Leper." Many scholars speculate Jesus healed Simon of his leprosy, a disease which would have barred the man from casual contact with society. His wealth simply assured he was a _famous_ leper. But to dine at a table in public, Simon would have to have been healed, and the circumstances indicate it could well have been at the hands of Jesus. This formal dinner would be a way of celebrating his return to public life, and to honor the One who made it possible.

In Mark's account, though, Jesus assures all it is the woman who would go down in history, at least among believers. This singular event proved so memorable John could mention it in his Gospel (John 11:2) and we instantly get a much better picture of Jesus' friendship with Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. The woman forgiven at Simon's "welcome back" party was Mary, the sister of Lazarus. Little wonder she did not share her sister's passion for domestic management, if indeed she had been a prostitute. Whether the stories are related or simply similar is not certain, but plenty of people see it as the same event.

In this case, we have a parable which is not so hard to grasp, but without the context could be very confusing.

Chapter 17 - Can Anything Good Come out of Samaria?

I have been told a really great teacher can remember what it's like not to know. Whether or not I qualify for such honor is subject to debate, but I do recall the time in my life when I did not know the basic outline of Bible history, especially the Old Testament.

How many Christians can tell you David was not the first King of Israel? Saul was. Or how many know David did not rule Israel at it's greatest? His son Solomon expanded the kingdom considerably. Solomon was wiser, by far, but failed to apply wisdom to all his actions. A rather foolish thing he did was tax his people one-quarter of their yearly income. For most Israelites, that meant laboring directly on royal projects 3 months of the year, because they seldom had cash to pay for taxes.

When Solomon died, his son, Rehoboam, was advised to lighten up; all the more so since there was someone with the political clout to lead a revolt. But the young man possessed none of his father's legendary wisdom, and promised to be even worse as a taskmaster. His political opponent – Jeroboam – managed to pull away 10 of the twelve tribes of Israel, leaving the heir something less than half of the original territory: the lands given to Judah and Simeon. The northern kingdom retained the name of Israel, and the southern was called Judah.

The two kingdoms swung back and forth between peace and war with each other for a couple hundred years. Then Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire (based in the north end of the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley), and all the folks who amounted to anything were exiled, scattered all around the great empire. Assyrians figured if one was pulled away from their homeland, they'd lose somewhat their national identity, because they had to leave their local gods behind. Since northern Israel had fallen far away from their Jewish faith, replacing Jehovah with a handful of pagan deities, the Assyrian ploy worked pretty well. The northern tribes of Israel were never heard from again.

About five percent of the original population was left behind, the poorest, to keep a few cities occupied and some of the farming land clear. Then Assyria brought in a load of exiles from some other places they conquered. By the time these arrived, much of the land had gone wild, and dangerous carnivores roamed freely. They appealed to the emperor to send back a few priests of the local gods so they could appease their anger and get things under control. They got some of those apostate priests who had helped Israel fall far enough to incur God's wrath in the first place. These priests produced a very highly edited version of the books of Moses, and the resulting religion bore some vague resemblance to Judaism.

In the meantime, Judah had finally angered God to the point where He raised up a new empire, first to conquer the Assyrians, and then to come on over and conquer Judah. The new kingdom in the northern half of Canaan, still developing, was called Samaria, after their capital city (they tried to rebuild what had been the old capital of Israel). The Samaritans didn't resist the new conquerors, Babylon, but Judah did. So Jerusalem was destroyed and the Kingdom of Judah had a turn at exile. But while they were gone, they tried to maintain their identity as Jews, and made some attempt to call on God.

Eventually, they were heard, and a new empire arose to take out Babylon. This new empire, Medo-Persia (Medes and Persians), let the Jews go back home if they wanted. A few did. They managed to fight off some political intrigues from some old enemies to the south (Edom mostly) and rebuilt somewhat the old Jerusalem. When they finally were ready to dedicate their new temple building, a group of Samaritan representatives showed up to join the party. They said something like, "Welcome back, fellow worshipers of Jehovah." Of course, the Jews were not fooled by this, and knew the Samaritan religion had only a smattering of truth. They told the Samaritans to get lost.

This was no small insult to the Samaritans, who were somewhat more powerful, but not willing to get in trouble with the imperial government by starting a war. Instead, they did everything short of war. For example, the Jews would post sentries on high hilltops to watch for approaching armies, a system everybody used in those days. If there was reason to raise an alarm, they would light a bonfire. In daylight, they'd make it smoke heavily. This was a pretty good alarm system for those days. The Samaritans would then choose a hill on the same line-of-sight from Jerusalem, and wait until dark and light a bonfire. The alarm would go up, the city would go through the drills, and all other activity would stop for a day or so. When they finally got word it was a false alarm, you can imagine their anger and frustration.

Two more empires washed over them both – Greece and then Rome – before Jesus was born. All this time, the petty bickering and angry insults between Samaria and Judah continued. The Jews called the Samaritans pagans, and Samaritans called the Jews all sorts of things, mostly arrogant. So no self-respecting Jew would be caught dead passing through Samaritan territory while traveling between Judah and Galilee (which the Jews had also re-occupied). Since Samaria lay directly between them, Jews would cross the Jordan River to the east side, pass through a couple of little kingdoms, and cross back over when they got far enough north to enter Galilee.

And Jesus said, "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked and passed by on the other side." (Luke 10:30-32)

All were traveling _down_ the road, which meant they were all departing Jerusalem, and going to Jericho – a drop in elevation of 1300 feet over just a few miles. It was common for robbers to work that route, which was rough and rocky, with lots of blind turns. Since the priest and Levite were leaving the Temple behind, neither of them could use the excuse of concern for ritual purity for not checking to see if the man was dead. For Jesus to suggest a Samaritan could be more kind and loving in dealing with a half-dead Jew than would be a priest or Levite (the cream of Jewish faith) was not actually hard for the audience to swallow (Luke 10:33-35), as the Temple staff were notoriously elitist. "So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (vs. 36 & 37)

The man who had asked the impertinent question about was his neighbor (verses 25-29) couldn't even bring himself to say, "The Samaritan." He had been trying to justify not being a nice guy. Jewish men living above the lower classes were infamous for being rude and stingy to anyone they weren't trying to impress. Jesus made it clear anyone who has a need without threatening you is your neighbor, and anyone who acts with godly compassion even more so.

Thus, He clearly demonstrates the Law of Moses was not properly interpreted by the Talmud, which tended to excuse such unkindness. The Samaritans had no Talmud, just a reworked version of the Torah. The Samaritan version did not cut out the commands to be merciful. The scribe had stuck his foot in his mouth by very properly summarizing the whole Old Testament: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind', and 'your neighbor as yourself.'" (v. 27)

If this is a proper reading of the Law, then why were scribes and other big shots so self-centered? They viewed it from rationalistic eyes, and three centuries of elitist traditions which essentially negated the higher morals of Mosaic Law. Fulfilling the Law was about loving God, and loving as God loved. That's the Law of Noah, too. And if you can't love those whom God created, you can't claim to love God. You can't claim to obey Him, and can't even pretend to know Him. That's the lesson of the Good Samaritan.

Chapter 18 - The Vast Gulf Between

Peter tells us we are required to be ready at any time to explain something of our faith to others (1 Peter 3:15). Those who attend various educational institutions, seeking to obey that command as a vocation, have learned there is a fancy term for the study of those things which make it possible to answer when folks try to poke holes in our faith: apologetics. It's not so much we apologize in the modern sense of the word for holding to ideas others find offensive (though the Political Correctness crowd would like us to do just that), but we have a ready answer for their objections to our faith.

One of my favorite teachers of apologetics is dead now, but he wrote an awful lot of books and such: Cornelius van Til. The one thing for which he is most famous among Christian scholars is the idea we have no common frame of reference with non-Christians. He talks about theories of how people come to know things – "epistemology" – how the human mind builds its internal structure for holding knowledge, and the mechanism for learning new knowledge. In an essay titled "My Credo" he says:

[A]ny non-Christian epistemology, i.e., any theory of knowledge based upon principles acceptable per se to the "mind of the flesh" ... is doomed to utter failure; not only failure as an avenue to Christian faith, but as an avenue to any form of knowledge whatsoever....

To look for a point of contact with the unbeliever in the unbeliever's notions of himself and his world is to encourage him in his wicked rebellion and to establish him in his self-frustration....

Why seek truth where only a lie is to be found? Can the non-Christian tell us, and therefore the Christ himself, what the facts are and how they are related to each other, in what way they cohere, while yet excluding creation and providence? If he can, and if he can tell us truly, then the Christian story simply is not true!

He connects this to Paul's contention the sinner's mind cannot accept the truth of God on its own terms (Romans 8:5-8). Remember: Paul did not come to Christ as a volunteer seeking truth, but was vanquished by the Holy Spirit while seeking to destroy the Church. Prior to the Damascus Road revelation, Paul simply could not accept what Jesus taught (Acts 9:1-9).

One of the things Jesus taught:

"I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!

"Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided; three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." (Luke 12:49-53)

Jesus knew there would be plenty of listeners who would reject His message. When someone claims to speak for God, they claim to reveal reality as God sees it. Since God is the Creator of all things, we can be certain His point of view is Ultimate Truth. Jesus proclaimed a way of looking at things contrary to what most Jews had taught or had been taught. Some would listen; some would not. The things He spoke about were eternal issues. By their very nature, these issues were all-or-nothing – either He was wholly right or completely wrong. One either agreed with Him or was opposing Him (Luke 11:23).

The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is full of audacious and unreasonable claims. It starts with the assertion we are all evil by nature and deserve a short miserable life, a long painful death, followed by eternity in Hell. Then He claims to be the only escape from that fate, regardless of where and when one was born. He lived a sinless life, died in our place, and has risen from the dead. Now He lives in each of our hearts, if we accept His teachings. These claims are ludicrous from the standpoint of human logic.

Most humans living at any time since Jesus' days on earth have predictably rejected these claims. Unless you live a sheltered existence, most people you know will also reject them. Plenty will claim to accept portions of them, or try to find parallels in their own beliefs as grounds for some sort of kinship in spirit, but that is not possible. God says, " _This_ is true," and anything but "this" is a lie and is sin.

This kind of exclusionary claim raises people's hackles. It makes folks treat us as enemies. It polarizes everyone and everything, no middle ground. This is the fire Jesus spoke of and the fire consumed His life in a baptism of suffering. He came to bring peace between God and man, not between man and man. You don't have to be confrontational and harsh to make enemies. Just love people the way Jesus loves them: enough to tell them the truth.

That same fire Jesus brought is a fire which cleanses souls from sin, a fire which gives new life, a fire which burns within to express His truth in how we live and speak. Do you stoke that fire, or do you quench it?

Chapter 19 - What Time Is It?

Four parables in a row recorded by Luke deal with repentance. The first is the parable of the Weather Signs:

Then He also said to the multitudes, "Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming;' and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, 'There will be hot weather;' and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?" (Luke 12:54-56)

How often have we heard people going through verbal gymnastics trying to make this verse about End Times? There is no reason to make the phrase "this time" fit any other period than the one in which Jesus lived at that moment. Whatever the term means, it has to include that. This is one of those sections where Luke avoids citing precise details to prevent fixing the date and place. What we do know is what often happened while Jesus traveled about teaching and healing: huge crowds would gather (see 12:1). Instead of chasing the precise context, Luke wants us to keep our eyes on what Jesus teaches about the nature of His ministry.

We have already seen in the last lesson where He debunks the notion of peace in a fallen world. Here He continues where John the Baptist left off: This is the one best time to repent, before everything changes forever. I am convinced John and Jesus both had in mind the coming final Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. This was the last opportunity for the Jews as a nation to get it right. We know they did not, and after the Roman General Titus destroyed the city, the Jews never again rebuilt the nation as it had been. The modern version of Israel is simply a secular political entity, with no significant concern for the Law of Moses, only for their ethnic identity and their ancient homeland. The majority of modern Israelis are ethnically Jewish people, but very few are actually followers of Judaism.

At any rate, there was no Judah or Israel for almost 2000 years. This was a direct result of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. He warned against this very thing with the next parable, about making peace with one's adversary at law (12:57-59). Jesus was saying God was about to take the nation to court, and they would surely be found guilty. Thus, the only escape was to make peace before court was in session. There was no time to lose.

On a similar note, Jesus responded to the latest news around that part of the world, where some Galilean extremists had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at one Passover (13:1-5). They had been such pests to Pilate he had them killed in or near the Temple grounds just before they presented their sacrifices. There was also a reference to the collapse of the Tower of Siloam. Because the Jewish religion had become so focused on this age and this life, there was little reference to any afterlife. Indeed, the Law of Moses had practically nothing to do with saving one's soul – virtually all its promises, blessings and curses applied to this life. The Jewish religion was very confused about this. Thus, when disaster struck, there was a popular myth that it was somehow due to sin in the life of the victims.

Jesus never denied the victims had been sinners, but retorted they were no worse than most any other Jew. The nation as a whole had long rejected a heart for God in search of a mere code of conduct. While the code was virtually impossible to keep, it was easy for the sinner to convince himself he was okay with God, because nothing bad had happened. Simply repenting of sin and turning with a whole heart to God would require changing their entire worldview. The Law had always pointed to a higher spiritual truth, something they denied.

Finally, He uses the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree to illustrate how God had just about had enough (13:6-9). Three years was plenty of time for a fig tree to mature enough to produce fruit. This one was worthless. The trusted servant interceded for just one more chance. God's patience was far beyond reason. Thus, Jesus warned often how God was about to chop down the tree of the Nation of Israel once and for all (Luke 3:8-9).

Jesus came to earth to provide, in part, one last opportunity for the Jews to finally get it, to grasp the original intent of all the previous covenants. With all His might, Jesus tried to break up the hardened soil of traditions of men, and fertilize it with the true teaching of the Word of God. God waited another 35-40 years after Jesus paid that awful price in blood, then destroyed the nation for good. If these, His very Own People, could meet such a fate for rejecting His Son, how much more those of us not born His People?

Chapter 20 - By Its Nature, the Kingdom

Then He said, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches." (Luke 13:18-19)

There were two things supposed to happen once Jesus had ascended to His throne. One of them was His Kingdom would grow massively. To some degree, this was what happened at the start. We are told by Luke of numerous converts joining the church in Jerusalem (Acts 2:41) after Peter's first recorded public sermon. We are later told of a persecution which arose and scattered the Messianic Jews across the local region (Acts 8:1-4). Of course, the natural result was the spreading of the gospel. After Paul's conversion, the Word went all over the Mediterranean Basin. We also have solid evidence of the Church arising in the Mesopotamian Valley and circumstantial evidence the Apostle Thomas took the message as far as India.

This Kingdom was supposed to become massive in size, large enough to shelter those who were easy prey outside the shadow of its wings. There was a sense in which this came true. We know the hordes of Germanic barbarian tribes which swept across Europe in the AD 400s were eventually tamed and civilized by the Church, in spite of the Church having become fairly corrupt by that time. Soon there were missionaries in the British Isles, in the Nordic lands, all over Northern Africa, and so on. In every place, large numbers made at least some form of commitment to Christ.

We have no way of knowing how genuine these professions of faith were, and it doesn't matter. Judging from the quality of the theology and message, in many cases we might be tempted to say almost none really came to Christ, but they did repent of their sins. Too often there were conversions at the point of a sword, which meant nothing. Today, we know a majority of those in the world claiming Christianity as their religion are, upon closer inspection, merely cultural adherents to something which is labeled "Christianity." That's good for a stable society, but not worth a great deal in terms of Kingdom growth as Jesus was referring to it. They are Christian in the sense of adopting a certain set of values, not in wholeheartedly following Jesus.

Ignoring, then, the official statistics, we can still say the Kingdom is massive. We know there are true believers all over the world, including places where admitting it means certain death, or at least expulsion from their homeland. It's not because Jesus meant His parable as a prophecy, but as a description of its nature. The church by its nature grows in size. Periods of decline, persecution, even genocide cannot invalidate that teaching. Over the centuries, the number of true believers has increased. If you and I are doing our part to follow Jesus, it will grow even greater. If it fails to grow, you and I share the blame.

Jesus said, "To what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened." (Luke 13:20-21) This was no small batch of flour the woman was working. The Greek word for "measure" here is _sata_ , about the same as Hebrew _seah_ – around 6 quarts. Thus, her batch of meal was about 18 quarts. And all it took was just a pinch of yeasted dough from the previous batch, and a warm damp place to keep it for a few hours, and the whole thing would change.

It should be obvious He says the second thing we should expect is the Kingdom would makes its way into every corner of the world. While it was typical in Hebrew idioms to associate yeast or leaven with sin, in this case Jesus clearly says the Kingdom is like leaven itself, not leaven the symbol. Given time and the right conditions, the Kingdom will have a dramatic impact on all it touches.

There are some who assume that impact should be something measurable in terms of politics, social reform, and the like. Jesus never did any of that. More than once the Gospel narrative points out how He avoided it when people tried forcing that role upon Him. Our impact as a leavening agent, as living seeds of truth blossoming into something far bigger than ourselves, is not easily measured in human terms. Some of it would surely be obvious. If we embrace Christ, we are embracing His teachings, a high moral standard which finds many fans among those who aren't moved to join themselves under that teaching. The impact is subtle, not overt. We have seen far too much of Christian organizations investing massive resources in things which are too easily measured in terms familiar to those who don't love Jesus, changing the message of the gospel into something foreign to Christ Himself. His message is not a better version of this world, just a better life within it, reflecting life from somewhere completely outside this world.

Yes, we teach the Covenant of Noah is still active, and nations are still held accountable – to God, not to us. If we do not teach this, we doom every nation to continuing sin without any chance to hear the truth. Hebrews 1:13 pictures the Father saying to the Son, "Have a seat here at My right hand until I put all Your enemies under your feet." How do you suppose He plans to do that, when it has nothing to do with conquering the human institutions of our world? The Law of Noah is not merely an excuse to impose some different secular laws painted with Western imagery of Jesus. It's about power over us, conquering our own individual sinful impulses. His enemies, our enemies, are we.

So while we hold forth the Laws of Noah as applicable to human government, the issue is the message. Our mandate is to tell, not enforce. Jesus enforced His Father's will by dying.

The nature of the Kingdom of Heaven is changing things by divine power, not by any human measures. Whatever it is spreading with the sword or any other human political activity, it's not the Kingdom. We don't get to see how plants grow or yeast invades flour, and we don't get to see how God works in human hearts. We are involved in the process, but rely entirely on things we cannot comprehend for the results.

Chapter 21 - Tough Enough

Recall for a moment all those nifty little evangelism aids you've seen: the little tracts, bumper stickers, videos, comic books, etc. Consider how it seemed to make committing oneself to following Jesus so very simple – how could the non-Christians say no?

"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26-27)

Most folks have no trouble seeing how the use of the word "hate" is meant in a relative sense. People who actually hate themselves are mentally ill and/or demonized. Hating others is simply not what Jesus taught us to do. So, in the context of His other teachings, we know He was calling on us to count all the things in this life which matter most to us as having no great worth compared to following Him. In order ensure His listeners understood, He mentioned the most horrific form of punishment known at that time: crucifixion. If one cannot willingly face that horrible end, they cannot be His follower.

Bear in mind this was before He Himself experienced crucifixion. He knew where it was going to end in a few days. He prophesied that it would be crucifixion, and that anyone who couldn't or wouldn't go there with Him can't be called His disciple. This is hardly the meaning of our popular phrase, "That is my cross to bear" in referring to something annoying us over the long term. No, Jesus was referring to self death, a death to self will which may very well include literal crucifixion, or something as bad.

"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it – lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'

"Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:28-33)

Jesus expanded on the comments about self-death by warning that it's no picnic being His disciple. I've seen at least a dozen attempts to make these images cover far more territory than Jesus meant. Some have made much of the mocking, others of the armies, the suing for peace, and so it goes. None of those details matter so much as this: We had better pay full attention to the demands Christ makes on all those who consider following Him.

How many evangelism messages have you heard calling on people to die? I've not heard too many. Nonetheless, that was the call Jesus made here: "Come die with Me!" I suppose we could say the phrase "give your life to Jesus" includes that idea, but it doesn't quite strike one's ears in the same way.

There is indeed a sense in which following Jesus is building something. It is to clear away all the old stuff which naturally occurs and lay down something solid, something with depth. Then, we begin to pile up one stone at a time. Most ancient towers were seldom more than what we would regard as a couple of stories. Still, to build it of stacked stones and mortar was quite a job. Never mind why we would want one, just assume we know we need it.

There is also a sense in which discipleship is war. And it's not being negative-minded to note it appears we are outnumbered. We ought to expect this war to be exceedingly difficult. Our Enemy is not one to negotiate, not in good faith at least. He wants only one thing – your surrender. And so does Jesus. But clearly, whatever enemy Jesus meant here, it was not supposed to be seen as the good guys.

But in each of these two illustrations, it must be noted that I expanded upon them in a devotional fashion, not building a doctrine. What I added can be found easily enough in other places, in much more precise terms (try Ephesians 6:10ff). Here, the point is simply drawing a picture in the mind, as the Hebrew language was designed to do: You have a lot to consider when you decide to follow Jesus. You cannot afford to let any thing on earth, even what you take as God's blessings themselves, get in the way of that radical servitude.

You cannot hold back a part of yourself, a part of your life, reserved for your own independent decision-making. All of it is His. It's all or nothing. Have we been failing in evangelism if we don't tell the whole truth of this? I have a phrase I've used for some years: "spiritual stillborns." How often do we step into a church for the first time, and encounter a majority who has made no progress beyond a token commitment? They may well be genuinely born-again; we aren't permitted to see what's written in the _Lamb's Book of Life_ for now. But they clearly have no fruit, no repentance.

Fruit is defined in Galatians 5:22-24. It is not a matter of what one has accomplished with others, but within oneself. Your fruit in the Spirit is the collection of changes you have allowed God to make inside your soul. Those internal changes inevitably result in the power to change some things around you. Those who haven't moved since their public announcement of their intent to follow Jesus are, for all practical purposes, still dead, unconverted, and unrepentant.

And why do we have so much of that in churches today? Could it be we failed to give them sufficient truth to count the cost? Did they really know what they were letting themselves in for, that they had to accept their own death, for all intents and purposes? If we did not tell them that, we have done both them and the Savior a disservice. In the best of cases, we know God does sometimes accept a partial commitment based on partial knowledge (look in the mirror of your own soul). Then He drags us kicking and screaming farther into His will. At worst, though, we have allowed lost and dying souls to believe they are saved, and have perhaps sealed their doom.

The Great Commission ends like this: "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you." He has commanded us to take up our crosses. If we don't include that in our message to the unbelievers, we have deceived them. By all this sweet talk of being born again, we have forgotten Jesus mentioned that phrase only once, as far as we know. He spoke of repentance and full obedience to the Law of Love a lot more.

Chapter 22 - Confidence Games

Scholars tell us the Hebrew language has some 800 root words, and all the rest are combinations of those few. They also tell us the Hebrew language was very visual, and was used to evoke emotions with that imagery. We have a hard time regarding such an emotive language as normal. It is broadly considered a mark of intellectual shallowness if one converses or writes in heavily loaded language in English. At the same time, we note most modern news media do that, as well as politicians. The difference is, in Hebrew it wouldn't be considered manipulation because no one pretends language is supposed to be used any other way.

It was then perfectly appropriate to communicate in dramatic terms in Hebrew and its cousins, the Semitic languages, just as it is today. In our parable for this lesson, The Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13), Luke records a word in Greek which came directly from Aramaic: _mammon_. It's almost certain Jesus used that very word as He taught this in His native tongue.

According to James Strong ( _Strong's Concordance_ ), it came from the idea of wealth. The word took on the connotation of a person; thus, it meant wealth personified as "great confidence." This is perhaps a sort of joke on the old Hebrew word _shalom_. The original meaning of _shalom_ was more than the commonly understood "peace," but included the idea of prosperity, social order, security, a readiness for bad times. It's almost a synonym for being blessed. To the Jewish mind in Jesus' time, the most concrete proof of God's favor was prosperity, security, and health. However, there was an awful lot of unspoken emphasis on the wealth part.

As time went on, the Jewish elite made much of accumulating wealth, and fought hard to keep from sharing it, contrary to the fundamental purpose God stated for blessing people with possessions. Given the natural tendency of humans to simplify things like that, there was the connotation of _mammon_ meaning the god of greed. To "serve mammon" was to worship at the shrine of acquisition, of getting more stuff, particularly stuff others didn't have. True servants of _mammon_ would step on anyone to get more.

Since the average Jew was rather poor, with no hope of ever rising above his poverty, you can be sure a little class envy got involved in the mix. However, most of the comfortable middle-class got where they were by ignoring the poor, and the upper-class did so by frankly abusing the poor. A little animosity was generally justified. In fact, anyone well off who was also generous and decent was a remarkable departure from the norm, and became quite famous.

Most of Jesus' listeners were on the poor side of the economy. They would have relished His use of the term _mammon_ as a picture of wealth gotten by means not entirely righteous. In this parable, Jesus used that term exclusively to emphasize how wealth could not possibly be the primary proof of God's favor. Wealth in that society was more likely a sign one was a sinner. It wasn't so much a blessing as it was plunder.

In this context, Jesus spins a tale of a household manager. The truly wealthy and their lifestyle were well-known, because they often put on a show to ensure everyone knew, "I am blessed of God, and you are not." The master of the house had too many other important things to do, and delegated the management of business affairs to a steward. This particular steward was ordered to stand for an audit, in preparation for losing his position. In the normal process of getting the accounts up to date, he made sure to cook the books. The beneficiaries of this embezzling were obviously going to be thankful. So long as he remained in his position, all the steward's decisions were legally binding, and the master could not revoke them later.

Nothing in the man's story is commendable. However, he earned the admiration of his master for being so clever. About to be tossed out with little more than the clothes on his back, he would surely have friends who could afford to host him and support him, perhaps give him a cushy job. The whole way through this story, Jesus is mocking the property-conscious Jewish elite. Notice He did _not_ say the Kingdom of God was like this. The point was this steward knew what _mammon_ was for: making friends. He owned precious little of it; his job was simply to handle it.

The wealthy and powerful Jews were fools for thinking wealth was really theirs. God owned everything, and was about to call them all to account for how they handled everything He had provided. If they had realized the nature of things, they would have known property is just a tool, a means, and not an end in itself. They would then be using property wisely, to build relationships with people, leading them to an understanding of God, to redemption. The human heart is the real arena, the place where God does His real work. They should have been seeking ways to make life better for people, carefully investing in Eternity. Then, when the party's over, they would be welcomed into Paradise by all those they had blessed.

Rabbis often mentioned the afterlife, and had many terms for it, but treated the concept as a myth. The orthodoxy was not in actually believing in it enough to change your life, but in paying lip service to it. For them, it was a matter of pushing God's buttons by doing all the correct things – sharply considered from every angle – so God would be compelled by His Covenant Law to reward them with _shalom_. Theirs was not a prosperity and security of the soul. Their version of Eternity was merely an endless time, instead of outside the limits of time.

If a thieving scoundrel, a man admittedly dishonest and sinful, knew best what to do when given control of _mammon_ , then in that sense he serves as a better example than the Jewish elite, who were so sure they were the cream of God's crop. Thus, Jesus sets him forth as a model of proper attitude toward wealth.

The Lord ends by stating several epigrams: "He who is faithful in what is least" – meaning mere material wealth – "is faithful also in much" – the things of the Spirit. "Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?"

And to ensure there was no misunderstanding about whether the steward did right or wrong, "And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?" It was common to reward honest and productive stewards with a bonus from the wealth saved or created in larger households, but only when the master was sure there would be no conflict of interest, in which the steward would spend too much time building his own personal wealth on the master's time.

And finally, this brings us to the context for the comment "No servant can serve two masters." If God is our Master, then we owe it to Him to invest full time and attention in building His Kingdom. The wealth of His Kingdom is in the hearts which have been changed. If you are too busy trying to gather up all the trappings of service, and putting all your effort into the means, you will neglect the reason for those things. It would be like serving another god, like a steward secretly taking bribes from his master's competitor.

Only, our Master knows all.

Chapter 23 - Never Satisfied

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) may not be a parable, but an actual piece of history. Jesus tells it in a style quite different from parables, and its meaning is so very bluntly clear: Rich people can go to Hell, even while obeying all the Pharisaical requirements.

Dimas (the nickname scholars like to give the Rich Man) bore all the earmarks of God's favor, by the Pharisees' doctrine. He dressed in the best and wiped his hands on pita bread at mealtime. The servants would dump this used pita near the gate, where Lazarus could fight the dogs for a bite. He was so weak, he couldn't keep those dogs from licking his open sores, which was more close contact from a dog than any Jew could normally tolerate. That the situation was reversed in Eternity would have rattled the Pharisees. Jesus' final comment, in the mouth of Father Abraham, was, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead" (v. 31).

God works through His Word. If that's not good enough to clarify His demands to people, then they aren't interested to begin with. Miracles aren't going to help. It's quite possible Jesus is here rubbing salt into the wounded reputation of the Pharisees by using the name Lazarus, the name of a man whom He had very publicly raised from the dead. That miracle had not changed their tune one bit – they still rejected the message of Jesus. Further, they were trying hard to prevent anyone else from hearing it.

Thus, Jesus turned to His disciples and warned them about hindering the fragile faith of fresh converts (17:1-2). Nothing could prevent random events shaking such faith dangerously, but one who did it purposely deserved a fierce condemnation from Jesus. He didn't suggest a household millstone, with which a strong man might be able to swim briefly, but the large ones pulled by donkeys. So great was the sin in Jesus' eyes that He ordered them to put up with the most exasperating behavior from one who was still struggling to learn (verses 3-4).

For this, the Twelve knew they needed a lot more faith than they felt they could call on right then. In the context, their word "faith" implies a sort of surrender and commitment which empowered one to act with absolute constancy. To respond good-naturedly to such weakness in others would be very costly, requiring a great store of self-denial which seemed more than even the best could possess. Notice, though, Jesus added the condition that the offender must actually repent. The trial for the disciple was honoring the righteous desire in the hearts of those unable to carry out their own wishes to do right.

Jesus replied they probably already had sufficient faith for the exercise, if they would just use it. "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you" (v. 6). Surely they had enough to outweigh a mustard seed! Of course, far too many have taken this aphorism too literally; they have tried yelling at trees unfortunately placed. Context is everything in the Hebrew culture.

Then Jesus addresses the real issue: Don't expect to approach perfection in this life. God willingly uses us as we are, even with just a small dab of faith. It is neither the amount of faith, nor necessarily the quality of it. It's just a matter of using what's there. We don't need great strength or power; we need humility. Putting up with the failures of others isn't so challenging when you consider what God puts up with from you.

"And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and sit down to eat'? But will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink'?" (vs. 7-8)

What is normal for the life of a servant amounts to an awful lot of work. Plowing with oxen was arduous, because they cannot be driven with any great finesse. Tending sheep was not quite a peaceful job, either; it was constantly chasing after strays, to say the least. So after a good 10-12 hours of this, the same servant might be expected to serve at the table. That's what servants were for, and what they expected. While their personal needs did get attention, their comfort didn't count for much.

Jesus was saying we are servants of God. That's the best life anyone could hope to see, to be accepted as one of God's slaves. Consider what our sins have done, and what we deserve. So we have upon us a monumental burden of responsibility to God. He owns us; we are not our own. How fortunate we are to be so!

"Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise, when you have done all those things which you are commanded say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done only what was our duty to do'" (vs. 9-10).

No matter how thoroughly we give of ourselves in service, we cannot possibly repay what we owe Him. If we should manage to fully obey in every respect, as Jesus had done, we are nothing special. Holiness remains forever a standard, not a destination. While it is just possible for earthly servants to push themselves so hard as to impress their earthly masters as exceptional among other slaves, that comparison doesn't exist for servants of God because human achievement bears no relation to the divine calling, except as a mere reflection.

There was a time when holiness as a concept was a harsh rod in the hands of Church leaders. We have seen plenty of emotional thrashing and other forms of abuse in fringe groups today. The mainline churches have long forgotten this message, though. In our attempt to be modern, we have pressed all too hard for making folks comfortable with their God, to the point they remain spiritual children, if spiritually alive at all.

Jesus did say in verse 3, "If your brother sins against you, rebuke him." Let him know what sin is. Then, if he seems to grasp it, and declares a readiness to leave his sin, we place our offended sensibilities under the Blood. If your brother fails in his efforts to lay hold of the truth of holiness in his life, but hasn't forgotten what it means to be holy, you are to rebuke and forgive, again and again. All he takes from you in the process, including the emotional cost, is already bought and paid for – it belongs to God. We are in His debt, so we charge such sins to His account.

This is not the counsel of despair saying, "You can't please God." It is the counsel of prodding; you can't overdo it. You owe Him your whole self. And when you are weak, and can't go on, one of His other servants will be there to forgive and show you His love.

Chapter 24 - Kingdom to Come

One of the most interesting debates among Protestant theologians today is whether the term "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven" applies to something we live with now, something coming later at Christ's return, or something including both. Sometimes it's just a matter of emphasis. We know in one sense, Jesus said clearly, what we live today can be called the "Kingdom of God" (Luke 9:27). Yet it's equally clear that phrase was also used to describe His Second Coming (2 Timothy 4:1). The Parable of the Minas (Luke 19:11-27) can be seen as either one. "Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and because they thought the Kingdom of God would appear immediately" (v. 11).

For many Jews, the term "Kingdom of God" meant a literal return of the Davidic Throne, a resurrection of the old Kingdom of Israel in her glory days. Obviously, this meant for them breaking Rome's power in some way, or at least a radical change in the way things stood during Jesus' lifetime. In spite of all Jesus said to clarify the prophecies, this notion remained the gut instinct of His disciples. In the final days of Jesus' life on this earth, as the dramatic conflict approached, and the group was traveling to Jerusalem, Jesus tried yet again to correct this.

A _mina_ is an old Hebrew word for a coin roughly equal to three month's pay for the average laborer, 100 denarii in Roman money. Those who were in business or property owners, or had special artistic skills would naturally make quite a bit more than a denarius per day. A nobleman would surely have considerable wealth, and could easily afford to loan that much to individuals. Keep in mind this is not the same story told in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). However, like many lessons Jesus taught, there was nonetheless a similar theme. In this case, it had a similar purpose: to clarify what was going to happen.

The specific problem Jesus had here was an almost frantic expectation: What they believed would be the "Kingdom of God" was about to arise just any day now. As His close followers, they were anticipating a wonderful future serving Jesus the Messiah. Some of what they were expecting can be found in a collection of predictions produced during the Years of Silence, when no Scripture was written, between Malachi in about 400 BC, and the earliest of the New Testament books (Paul's letters) beginning around AD 50. During that space of time there arose wild predictions (Messianic Expectations) which had some bearing on the Temptations in the Wilderness Jesus endured at the hands of Satan (Luke 4:1-13). In each offer Satan made, Jesus was tempted to be the Messiah everyone was expecting, rather than the Messiah God had actually sent Him to be.

Readers may recall Herod the Great died while Jesus was an infant (Matthew 2:16-23). We also note Herod's son, Archelaus, inherited the throne, but not all his father's domain. What we are not told in the biblical accounts is how Archelaus had no easy time getting that crown. First, it was for the Rome to decide who ruled its subject kingdoms. Herod had left the throne in his will to Achelaus, and the imperial government was aware of that. His brother, Antipas, was contesting that will, based on a claim of support from the Jewish community leadership. The issue for Caesar to judge in his court was to verify the will, then to verify if indeed the resistance to Archelaus was significant. It was imperial policy not to set a king over people who simply could not tolerate him, unless there was a compelling reason.

Since the Herodian family was from Edom, circumcised and married into the surviving ruling family of Judah, it took an awful lot of political maneuvering and constantly placating the Jewish nobility to keep Herod on the throne in the first place. Recall, he designed and built a new Temple for his Jewish subjects. The resistance to Archelaus was troubling and he had to appear personally in Rome to settle the issue. Right behind him came a delegation of Jewish nobles who claimed to represent the will of the Jewish nation in opposing him in favor of Antipas. The latter had made some big promises to a faction of Jewish leadership. However, Archelaus won his case, and returned to rule as his father's heir. That he was no nicer than his father, and had taken the throne in a foul mood, prompted Jesus' parents to move to Nazareth, in Galilee, outside the particular parcel of jurisdiction Archelaus had inherited from his father's kingdom, upon returning from Egypt. Keep in mind, Herod tried to have Jesus killed as a possible usurper, actually a legitimate royal descendant of Israel.

But the story of political intrigue between Herod's sons was fairly well known by the time of Jesus' ministry. Thus, He took it as the background for this parable. When this would-be king departed, he distributed some of his assets for more than just safekeeping. He was a hard man, and expected some profit from these loans. He specifically told his servants to do business, to invest his money in something which would bring a return.

How the man in this parable settled affairs on his return was a blend of Herodian harshness and Kingdom holiness. Those entrusted with the money were called to account. In this, we see the King of Kings will expect us to branch out in faith. We are required to take what He has given us and use it for His business: changing hearts. The disciples were to remake themselves into His image, by using His power and knowledge. Though they may have had little enough at the time, it was certain if they walked in the light they had, more would come. Some would go far with that mission, because the changes in themselves would be the means to bringing others into the Kingdom. Some would not do quite so well, but that would be no direct cause for God's displeasure.

He who takes God's investment into his heart and simply hangs onto it has accomplished nothing. If we see our lives as the marketplace, the merchandise to be bought with His Word and loving power, we can get a sense of what Jesus is saying here. When we first come to Him, we have agreed to His ownership and Lordship. We spend the rest of our earthly lives executing His claims on all our whole selves. The areas of our existence which are not occupied in His business have to be seized on His authority, bit by bit, until it all serves His Kingdom. We take sides with this new conquering ruler, as his agents against our old ways. The process itself is infectious, and draws others to consider a similar deal with God.

To fail in activating His ownership, to fail in giving Him hands-on control over the affairs of our daily living, is to fail miserably His command to accomplish something with His grace in us. What He can trust us with later will be based on how fully we turn things over to Him early on. His property is occupied by a lot of demonic squatters. If we make no effort to evict Satan's minions, Jesus' sacrifice is wasted. However, we note in the parable this servant who failed is simply stripped of his future opportunities, and the riches of life that could have been his go to someone more faithful. The failed servant is not turned out, but simply not allowed to advance to a place of responsibility. Such are restricted to lesser responsibilities, kept back from hurting the Kingdom business, and from hurting the faith of others.

Those who actively oppose His Lordship are another story. They will be destroyed. The Herodians had no qualms with dispatching their enemies. There are stories of a bloodbath upon this one's return from Rome. The final end of those who reject Christ will be far worse.

The point Jesus makes with all this? His active rule would be delayed. Did He mean the 3 days He spent in the grave, plus the 40 days or so after His resurrection, followed by His ascension? And then can we say He began to rule as the Holy Spirit, who descended at Pentecost? Or did He mean the long period of grace from His ascension until the Day of Return, sometime longer than these 2000 years so far? Or is it both, in one sense or another?

That doesn't really matter here. What Jesus was saying was to forget about those dreams of ruling in the Courts of the Messiah, the Second David, at least in the short term of their dreams. He knew the events subsequent to His crucifixion and resurrection would clarify things, anyway. Once they passed through the dark night of His trial, the agony of His death, the dejection of His burial, and the unspeakable joy of His resurrection, all their silly notions would be forgotten. If they could just make it through that final week of Passover, things would move too quickly for them to react foolishly. It was necessary to restrain them from trying to fight Roman soldiers, expecting miracles to make it possible for them to win.

The battlefield was about to change completely.

Chapter 25 - Not in Shadow

John presented a side of Jesus the other three Gospel writers did not cover well. Their works had long been published when John filled in the gaps by telling things from a different angle. Rather than sketch out the life of Jesus historically, John provides a decidedly non-chronological account which focused on Jesus' character. In the process, he doesn't recount so many of Jesus' parables, though he often included some of the more puzzling illustrations Jesus used.

At the point where Jesus received news of Lazarus' death, we know it was a period of time when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were actively seeking to arrest Jesus, and had recently tried to incite a mob to stone Him. Recall how Jesus had long worked to poke holes in the tightly closed system constructed by the rabbinic traditions. Jesus was about to present them with the ultimate challenge. He knew the timing of Lazarus' illness was according to the Father's plan.

Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick." When Jesus heard that, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it." (John 11:3-4)

If you had read the previous 10 chapters of John's Gospel before this, you would recognize the pattern. Jesus would be emphasizing something about the Kingdom of God by using symbolic language, comments which should not be taken literally. Saying Lazarus's sickness was not unto death, Jesus was referring to the final end of the matter. The point was not to confuse, but to clarify: Bodily death was of no consequence to the Lord of Life. Lazarus' body would indeed expire, but that's not where the story ends.

And the reason was to glorify the Son. I can't imagine anyone else on this earth who could say something like that about himself without arrogance. Yet, we can see from the context Jesus was not in the least arrogant, or pursuing glorification of His humanity. He was proceeding on a course which would verify the power behind the words He spoke. He was about to do something which would forever discredit the Pharisees' claims against Him. They insisted they were defending the teachings handed down from Moses against any heresy and blasphemy.

Thus, He had to wait to ensure Lazarus was unquestionably dead. Those who have pondered the Gospel accounts will note we know of no one who died in the presence of Jesus. If Jesus had gone to see His close friend, Lazarus would not have died, and this important demonstration would be missing. When that wait was done, Jesus announced it was time to return to Judea. If the previous chapter is connected to these events, that would mean they had been staying on the East Bank of the Jordan, probably in Perea.

At this point, His disciples raised the issue of the very literal threat to His life. Was He going back so quickly after such a close call? Jesus' answer has perplexed many ordinary believers.

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." (11:9-10)

Again, He uses a common experience of daily living to express a spiritual truth. We might paraphrase it like this: "By choosing to live in the light of the Father's revealed truth, I can always expect to get where I am supposed to be, regardless of the circumstances. If I take off on a path He didn't choose, I am ignoring His revelation, and I am most certainly going to have problems."

This incident with Lazarus was something God had decreed. It must happen in order for His glory to shine. That glory had to shine through the Son, and through the Son's actions. To walk in fear of human plotting is to walk in darkness. Had He not already escaped more than one attempt on His life, because it was not His time to die? And when it came His time to die, no human effort would save Him. The murderous Sanhedrin were the Father's problem. They would fail at anything He hadn't planned. Jesus was not going to die until He and the Father agreed it was time.

His next comment on the road, about Lazarus being asleep, was not mocking the sorrowful occasion. He was trying to show them the situation was not permanent, because the Father had authority to change things to suit Him. Death was just another circumstance. That authority had been committed into the hands of Jesus. In this particular situation, the dead man would not stay dead, and it was best to simply see it as a temporary condition, like sleep. They were going to wake him up.

Later on, when the Holy Spirit came, they would see all this so very clearly. Not now. They were still operating on that old level, thinking Lazarus was asleep as the primary sign of recovery from sickness. It must have been so frustrating for the Master. He stopped and told them straight out His friend had died, and it was necessary he do so. That's why Jesus couldn't go heal him earlier.

But now they were going to him, and the world would never be the same. They still persisted in operating on the old level of understanding, the human level. At this point, we realize calling Thomas "the Doubter" is a complete injustice. Thomas is no doubter, one who can't accept the truth; he's a "show me!" kind of guy. Once he'd been shown, he was ready to go all the way to death with that knowledge. His comment was quite serious: If Jesus is going to join Lazarus in the grave, it was their duty to also die. Whatever was included in following Jesus, Thomas was not going to bail out now.

We might say Thomas was a little slower than some to recognize the light of truth when he saw it, but there's no sin in being cautious. There's no sense committing to something you can't grasp. Once Thomas understood what was going on, and understood his part in it, he was content to go forward, come what may.

If Thomas is a Doubter, make me one too.

Chapter 26 - Soul Seeds

Why did Jesus teach in parables? Even when it was easy enough to state things in more common terms, He insisted on using parables. His disciples were puzzled and oddly, in response to a parable about parables, asked why. "Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some of the seed fell by the wayside ... on stony places ... among thorns ... but others fell on good ground..." (Matthew 13:3-9).

I find it sad people insist on reading their cultural and intellectual biases back into this parable, just as they do with the rest. Jesus echoed in His preaching much of the same message as His cousin, John the Baptist. The seed is the Word of God as it was known in that day, and Jesus Himself taught it in terms of a call to repent from the shallow, trendy Hellenistic approach of the Jewish leadership. Jesus called people to restore the ancient ways of understanding the Scripture. This call to repentance is not the same thing as the soul-winner's canned gospel sales pitch. Such a sales pitch is little different from what was offered by the teachers Jesus disputed. If we lose the context in which Jesus operated at the time, we miss the point of this, and every other parable He taught.

The revelation of God is like seeds for the soul. The seed is the call to repentance. The various types of soil are hardly a catalog of the full range of human response to such a call, but the list offered is representative of all the various reasons people can't seem to embrace that call and make it stick. Some never seem to understand it, others underestimate the implications, and others have worldly priorities preventing a sincere change of heart. If there is going to be an eternal change in the human soul, it begins with repentance, planted by the message of revelation. Embrace the part the mind can understand – the Laws of God – and you are ready to walk in whatever divine miracle of spiritual change which might come. If there is going to be any fruit of spiritual change, it has to come via the call to repent.

So much Jesus explained to His associates, but He first hit them with something few today understand, largely because they prefer to see all things in the Hellenistic terms of the Pharisees, not in the ancient Hebrew sense. The parable itself is about parables, and how they fit into the mission of revelation.

"Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. Therefore, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." (Matthew 13:11-13)

Jesus then goes on to quote Isaiah 6:9-10. The quote is not simply shoring up His assertions by some literal wording, but is meant to call up a much larger contextual frame of reference. The call of Isaiah included the prophet understanding many of the people had chosen to reject a sincere adherence to the Covenant of Moses. They were sure they understood the world better than some quaint old fables. Having made such a choice, they would be hardened in it. Choose sin and God will give you all you can take, and then some. As long as you cling to man's assessment of what is good and right, you'll never understand God's justice. That's true now, and was true then. So if you reject His truth, you'll be driven even farther from it.

Parables serve the purpose of driving sinners farther away, and drawing the righteous closer. In more modern clinical terms, the effect of using parables is polarization. It serves as a filter. Those who find themselves drawn to the message of repentance would keep coming even if their minds didn't understand it all. Those unmoved would find no reason to hang around. We who cling to Christ have neither ability nor need to withdraw completely from the fallen world in which we live. When we cling to the truth, living it and speaking it, we will be as separate as God intends. All the human details will take their own course, as it were, while we keep our focus on what matters.

We as Christians throughout history, and throughout Western Civilization as a whole, have suffered long enough with our souls hardened by constant running to and fro, chasing the false promise of Hellenized intellectual assumptions. We have been for too long shallow in our assessment of Scripture as mere propositions. Our spiritual growth has been entangled in the drive to be respectable to those whose spirits are dead. Jesus called His own people to return to the ancient ways, and we are not excused from seeking that same ancient Hebrew approach to understanding revelation.

Let the seeds of revelation find root in your soul.

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