//These are the words of Jesus, explaining why he was sent into the world by God. It is to bring good news to the poor.

Some context helps. Jesus is just beginning his public ministry, and he returns to his hometown of Nazareth. He enters the synagogue during a Sabbath gathering, unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, and begins reading aloud the words of today’s verse. Good news for the poor. Isaiah’s prophecy continues:

“[God] has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The “year of the Lord’s favor,” often called the Jubilee, occurs every fifty years. It is the year in which debts are forgiven, slaves are set free, and property  is returned to its original owner. It is a law that had fallen into disfavor, and it’s anybody’s guess whether anyone at all observed the Jubilee year anymore by Jesus’ time. Having read these words, Jesus tells the crowd, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Do you share Luke’s perspective? Let’s be clear, here. Luke is not talking about proclaiming the good news of a future resurrection. This isn’t about heaven at all. That is not Jesus’ purpose in coming! We are talking about bringing relief for the desperate and freedom for the oppressed. Jesus’ message is very this-worldly, and his Gospel (which means “good news”) is directed to the peasant. Luke 6:20 is equally clear: “Blessed are you who are poor.” Not “poor in spirit,” but just plain “poor.” Why? Because the Kingdom of God has arrived, and things will now be different.

You’re not poor and oppressed? Then maybe this isn’t very good news. The Gospel message for you, then, is to participate in the fulfillment of scripture, not by receiving but by giving and releasing.

//Today’s verse is a beautiful bit of poetry, but it’s also a caution against reading all of the Bible literally. Of course we are not literally “knit together” by God in the womb, for to believe this would mean believing that God sometimes makes mistakes. Our progeny are not always perfect. We see children born with congenital defects, such as Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis. Most of these defects, we know, are caused by mistakes in the replication process of genes during reproduction, or by faulty genes that are inherited from one or both parents. Life is miraculous, but not supernatural…indeed, life is quite natural, succumbing to the same rules of replication and distortion that produced us through billions of years of evolution in the first place.

The psalmist continues,

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

… words that echo in my own heart. Fearfully and wonderfully made am I, through the awesomeness of evolving life.

//Most Christians interpret the New Testament as a sort of replacement for the old law. We eat all the pigs we want, we wear cotton-blend clothes, and though we may sometimes feel like stoning our children for disobedience, we quell the temptation. The old law has been replaced by Jesus, and all those weird rules don’t apply anymore, right?

So what are we supposed to do with with verses like this one, today, which tells us not to eat the blood of animals? This one is right here in the New Testament. Presumably, we should still be eating only kosher meat…or no meat at all?

With a little creativeness, you can surely devise several excuses why the rule doesn’t apply. The most important excuse is surely that it’s just a downright silly rule. We don’t want to be shackled with rules about what to eat or wear or say or do. If we followed all the rules of the New Testament literally, we’d all be plucking out our right eyes and cutting off our right hands (Matthew 5:29-30). So, we reason, most of the rules just don’t apply … they are “examples,” not “rules.”

Except for those rules that are easy. Those, well, they’re the ones we’re supposed to follow, right? If you haven’t gone through divorce, it’s easy to preach against divorce. If you aren’t gay, it’s easy to preach against gays.

Personally, I think the only rule we should preach is the one that says we are not to judge one another.

//Interesting story, no?

The Jews, you might remember, take their name from the tribe of Judah. It quickly became the dominant tribe, the home of Jerusalem, and the survivor when the Assyrians conquered and scattered the ten northern tribes. Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, is the ancestor of the Jews, of King David, and eventually of Jesus.

But all of this nearly didn’t happen. Judah wouldn’t have had any children at all, were it not for his conniving daughter-in-law, who lured him to her by disguising herself as a prostitute. The Bible seems not to condemn her actions at all, but admires her initiative. In retrospect, we can understand why! There would be no Jews today without her, for she bore Judah’s child.

But the plan to bring about a nation of Jews was nearly derailed by Judah’s piety. When told that his daughter-in-law carried a child by prostitution—not knowing it was his own child—he ordered her death. Thankfully, Tamar had kept Judah’s signet and walking stick from his visit, and could thus prove that it was he who had slept with her. So, she survived, the baby survived, the tribe of Judah survived, and the Jewish nation came about.

//Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ prayer of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is overwhelmed by the need to die in horrible fashion, and asks God if he can “remove the cup.”

This weakness drew mockery from Celsus, a pagan critic of the second century: “Why does [Jesus] howl, lament, and pray to escape the fear of destruction?” It’s a good question. Doesn’t it seem a bit sissy-like to whine about it ahead of time?

This seemed to bother Luke as well, who stripped away all traces of weakness in his telling. Jesus shows no agitation or distress at Gethsemane, and says nothing about being “deeply grieved” (Mark’s words).

John’s Gospel goes a step further, and ignores the entire event. Not only does the final Gospel cut the Gethsemane scene, it reports that Jesus never made any such request of God:

“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” – John 12:27

Yet, regardless of how the tale is told, I suspect the agony of knowing about such a fate ahead of time would be far greater than any of the gospels admit.

And [Jesus] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Whether you believe Satan was cast out of heaven before the world began, or during the age of Christ, or again in some future eschatological event, the idea here is that a third of the stars follow him down to combat the Christ child. They “fall from heaven” with him.

//I wrote about this verse a couple months ago, but must not have gone into enough detail for some. So bear with me; here we go again, from a different angle, because this is one of the most interesting verses in the Bible to me.

Upon first glance, it seems to say that God apportioned an appropriate section of land to each nation. He did so not by counting the individuals in the nation, but by counting the number of Israelites. Huh?

This turns out to be a poor translation. “Children of Israel” is universally understood to mean the descendants of Jacob (later renamed Israel). But this isn’t even close to the original wording.

The Masoretic text reads “the number of the sons of Israel”. Stepping back to the Greek in the Septuagint (before Christ), it reads “the number of the angels of God.” Stepping back further to earlier Hebrew, as recently uncovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it reads “the number of the sons of God.”

The idea appears to be this: Each of the nations had a designated angel (son of God), such as the way the angel Michael is known as the representative of Israel. When the angels war, the nations war. While that nation is in power, their angel is in power, and vice versa.

An interesting example of this occurs in Daniel, chapter 10. Here, the representative angels are called “princes.” This appears to be the angel Gabriel speaking of wars with Persia and Greece:

“But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.” –Daniel 10:13

“[N]ow will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come. But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.” –Daniel 10:20-21

Hezekiah received the messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses–the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil–his armory and everything found among his treasures.

//Once upon a time, king Hezekiah fell sick, and was told by the prophet Isaiah that he would not recover. Word of Hezekiah’s terminal illness got around, and one day the prince of Babylon sent an envoy bearing a gift to the king’s palace.

In the mean time, Hezekiah prayed to God and God said he would extend Hezekiah’s life fifteen years. So, when the prince of Babylon arrived, Hezekiah was no longer on his death bed. Spry and happily recovered, he cheerily decided to give the prince a royal tour. Hezekiah showed him all of his riches … silver, gold, spices, fine oil, and all his treasures. He even showed the prince his armory.

Then Hezekiah died, and you all know what happened next. Back came the Babylonians, this time bearing swords, not gifts. Having scoped out the enemy, they conquered Hezekiah’s kingdom and plundered all of his riches.

Question: Did God let Hezekiah live only so that he would commit a horrible tactical blunder?

//Have you ever given this verse much thought? Apparently, the Athenians sensed there was more to the divine than what they currently recognized, for they had set up an altar to worship the unknown. Content to honor a mystery, they stood in awe of something or someone indescribable.

Apparently, it is possible to worship God without knowing him. But Paul wanted the Athenians to move beyond reverence, and actually experience God. To “know” God, as the creator of heaven and earth, the source of “life and breath and everything else.”

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ –Acts 17:28

This, says Paul—blending our whole being into the mystery that is God—is how we ought to experience the divine.

//Ever read a failed prophecy in the Bible? Here’s one. The city of Tyre mocks Jerusalem, and God promises vengeance. God sicks Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, on the disrespectful city of Tyre:

For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army. He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. — Ezekiel 26:7-8

The description of war continues further; the entire battle appears scripted ahead of time. But alas, when Nebuchadnezzer does make his move, the attack fails. In a rare admission of error, Ezekiel admits Tyre somehow survived the oracle, he must have misunderstood the message from God. Now he quotes God as saying Nebuchadnezzar will conquer Egypt instead:

In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month on the first day, the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon drove his army in a hard campaign against Tyre; every head was rubbed bare and every shoulder made raw. Yet he and his army got no reward from the campaign he led against Tyre. Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth. He will loot and plunder the land as pay for his army.” –Ezekiel 29:17-19

I say: nyah, nyah to all you skeptics who think the prophecies in the Bible were all made after the event they describe. This one obviously wasn’t.

//Seldom does John include a story in his Gospel without a deep theological undercurrent. Today’s verse begins the famous story of the lame man at the pool. He lies waiting for the water to be “troubled,” indicating the presence of a healing angel, and Jesus tells him instead to just get up and carry his mat away. Miraculously healed, the man obeys.

But is there some significance to the location at the pool of Bethesda? This location has a history. Hundreds of years earlier, King Ahaz made a trip to Jerusalem to inspect this pool, to insure that an adequate water supply existed in the case of an attack by the Assyrians.

Ahaz is making plans that do not meet the approval of God, and when he arrives at Bethesda, the prophet Isaiah confronts him. Isaiah offers to provide a sign from God as evidence of God’s direction, and Ahaz refuses, presumably to avoid being presented with evidence that he was in the wrong.

Isaiah provides the sign anyway, in another very famous Biblical passage. The sign Isaiah proposes is that a young maiden will bear a child, and name him Emmanuel.

How does any of this relate to New Testament times? Besides the obvious, that is, of how this child became understood as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus? I’ll let you ponder, and continue the story tomorrow.

//The story of this verse begins hundreds of years earlier. God appears to the prophet Ezekiel with this message:

“Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. –Ezekiel 24:16

Jerusalem was destroyed, and God wept not. But hundreds of years later, God comes down to earth as Jerusalem is about to be destroyed again. This time, he sees Jerusalem from the vantage point of a man. God (Jesus) sees Jerusalem in its pitiful state, knows its destiny is to again be slaughtered, and this time around cannot help but weep for his bride.

//This verse contains a funny little explanation, reminding us that the word Siloam means “sent.” Indeed, Siloam is a transliteration of the Hebrew word Shiloah, meaning “send.” Why do you suppose is this important enough for John to mention?

Most readers relate the word “sent” to the command of Jesus: “Go.” But I learned something interesting, reading David Audlin’s translation and commentary on the Gospel of John. The name may have been coined because it sent forth the water that entered Jerusalem through a tunnel constructed by Hezekiah.

With that definition of Siloam in mind—the location that healing water is sent from, not where the man in today’s verse is sent to—let’s discuss the setting of Jesus’ miracle. Jesus had just been expounding to his disciples about how he is the light of the world. In several other places in John’s Gospel, we find Jesus compared to living water. So, we should not be surprised to find this verse tucked away in the book of Isaiah about “gently flowing” living waters—a picture of Jesus:

“Because this people has rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah and rejoices over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore the Lord is about to bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the River—the king of Assyria with all his pomp. –Isaiah 8:6-7

//This is a verse that troubles a lot of people. Will your little boy be condemned to everlasting hellfire because of a few “goddamns?”

No. First, get it out of your head that “eternal sin” means hellfire. A more precise interpretation of the passage is that your cussin’ son is sinning against the new age of God’s rule; he is living as if Jesus had never come. But even this doesn’t fit the flavor of the verse.

If you’re wondering what it really means to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, this passage in Mark contains an example. Those watching Jesus heal others were saying that Jesus was using the power of Satan to cast out demons. Jesus warned them about blasphemy “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”

Picture the scene. Jesus is waving his arms, shouting at demons to chase them away, embarrassing his family and friends with his antics. The people mock him, laughing that he looks like he’s demon-possessed himself. Worse than those he’s curing! The prince of demons himself has hold of him! Ha!

So Jesus says don’t you know you’re laughing at the Holy Spirit? Don’t you realize that we’ve entered the age of abundant life, when the Spirit is to come back to earth? You are making fun of God’s new age! You are stuck in the past, in danger of never understanding, never entering into the life God has planned for you!”