In Israel, there was a time of Kings, a time of Judges, there were prophets and wars and upheavals. Israel itself was split into two kingdoms for a while, and every time an empire rose, they marched right in and took over. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and finally the Romans.

Relatively speaking, the Romans weren't so bad. When they took over a place, they sent in governors and troops and what not, but they left in place whatever government was already there, more or less. They didn't care what religion you were or what language you spoke or how you cut your hair; they really didn't even care if you liked them or not, as long as you paid your tribute to Caesar. They didn't enslave anyone or slaughter people for no reason or herd them all into relocation camps. As far as world-conquering dictators go, Caesar wasn't such a bad sort.

The Israelites still kept their law and their Temple made their sacrifices and all that. The problem, I think, is that all of this stuff was supposed to mean something, and whether they forgot it, or never quite figured it out, or just plain didn't care, I don't know. I guess they just figured, God told us to do this stuff, so we'll do it. On the one hand you had these folks called the Pharisees, who were kind of a ruling class, very legalistic and strict and judgemental. On the other hand you had the Sadducees, who were kind of the liberals, the intellectuals, who questioned and debated or just just outright denied every little point of the Law. Basically these guys were the ruling class, the privileged, well-educated.

This was the situation when Jesus came onto the scene.

Now, if you've ever seen a movie about Jesus, it probably started off with a little bit about the Christmas story and the manger and all that, and then skipped ahead 30 years to where He's starting His public ministry and folks are standing around scratching their heads and saying "Who is this guy? Where did He come from?" But I don't think it was like that. The whole point of the Christmas story is that He was born just like a regular guy. Luke said that Jesus "grew in stature." so folks knew Who He was. They knew His family and all that, and when He started preaching they were like "Isn't this Jesus of Nazareth?" To you and me, it sounds like a big deal, but back then, to them, it was like "Isn't this Joey from Nebraska?" Not because they didn't know him, but because they did. He was a guy from the neighborhood.

Now, folks in Israel were used to dealing with prophets. I mean, they didn't see prophets all the time, but they knew what a prophet was and knew that from time to time one came along. In fact, they'd just been seeing John the Baptist preaching in their streets not too long before this. Prophets walked around saying "Thus sayeth the Lord, thus sayeth the Lord" all the time, just so you didn't get the wrong idea about Who they were representing. They always preached judgement and repentance and wrath. Folks in Israel knew what a prophet was, and how to deal with them, but they didn't know quite what to make of Jesus.

For one thing, He didn't talk like a prophet. He didn't say "Thus sayeth the Lord," when He spoke, He said "Verily, verily, I say unto you...." which to us seems kind of strange. We might think it's just an affectation, an expression, like saying "I'm telling you, man" but it was more serious than that. The things Jesus was speaking about were like God and eternity and the Law, and these folks took that stuff very seriously. Not like today, where everyone has and opinion and no one really cares anyway. These folks based their whole culture around this stuff, and spent their lives studying it, and here comes this Guy speaking with authority. We hear "Verily, verily, I say unto you...." and we wonder what does verily mean and why say it twice in a row (it means "truly," by the way), but they didn't so much hear the "verily" as they did the "I". When He spoke about spiritual things or Godly things, He wasn't speaking as or claiming to be a prophet, He was claiming to be God. And they didn't miss that.

Now, Jesus did preach judgement and repentance, it's true. but His overall mesage spoke about things they probably never gave much thought to, like faith and mercy and love and forgiveness. The law didn't provide for any of these things except for maybe the occasional brutal, bloody sacrifice.

And then, to top it off, He criticized them. He told them that they had it all wrong. You folks hear "Don't murder," He said, and so you don't actually murder, and yet you're so full of hate and rage that you're just as guilty as if you did. You hear "Don't commit adultery," and so you just stare at every thing in a skirt and undress her with your eyes. So you avoid the act, but you carry it around in your heart and that's where the sin is.

Now think about it for a minute. These were God's Chosen People, God gave them the Law and as far as they knew they'd been keeping it. And now, Jesus is telling them something new: Not that the Law doesn't matter, or that it's not valid, but that it's simply not enough.

Say you're Stephen Hawking and you know more about theoretical physics than any other man alive. And say you just found out that that everything you knew about theoretical physics was just Chapter One. Wouldn't you be pissed? That's kind of how it was for these guys.

Anyway, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were. They hated Jesus so much that they almost forgot to hate each other. This one time, this group of them approached Jesus and said "So, should we ought to be paying taxes to Rome?"

They didn't ask out of curiousity, and it wasn't just thought up on the spur of the moment. They'd been debating this very point for years. You see, the Pharisees hated the Romans because they were Pagans, and they wanted nothing to do with them, and anything they might do to help the Romans was seen as treasonous. The Sadducees were wishy-washy and wanted to get along with the Romans, and I guess kind of felt like the Romans were there whether they liked it or not. So if Jesus says yes, pay taxes, then the Pharisees brand Him a traitor to the Jews, and if He says no, the Sadducees get him in trouble with the government.

Jesus showed them the image of Caesar on this coin, and said "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Basically, that they were arguing politics and forgetting about the stuff that was really important. But more than that, by pointing to the image of Caesar and saying it was Caesar's, He was telling them something: As anyone who ever went to Kindergarten in sunday school, man was made in God's image, and our very lives are what God is due.

Anyway...

So Jesus goes around upsetting folks; some people love Him, some people hate Him, and some just totally freak out. And at one point some Pharisees bring a woman into the Temple courtyard to stone her to death, and they tell Jesus that they just caught her in the act of adultery. They say now, the Law says that she should be put to death, what do you say? They wanted Him to contradict the Law, so He would hang Himself. But He didn't answer right away. He leaned over and wrote something in the dirt. So they asked Him again, and He says "Let he among you without sin cast the first stone." and then went back to writing in the dirt. Everybody felt so guilty after that that they left. All but the woman, and He just told her "Go, and sin no more."

He was always telling people "Go". Go, sin no more. Go, spread the word. Go, baptize in My name. Get thee behind Me.

Now it's true that the Law says that adulterers were to be put to death. It's in Leviticus 20:10 if you want to check it out. But if these guys caught her in the act, then they sure didn't catch her alone. You can't adulterate all by yourself (I think there's another word for that). I wonder where the guy was? Maybe he was a buddy of theirs, or maybe they let him go, or maybe he was even standing right there with them. The point is, they claimed to be so worried about the Law, and they weren't even following it. The next thing I wonder is what He was scratching in the dirt. It says it in the Bible (John 8:1-11). It even says it twice. I wonder was He just writing the names of their girlfriends? Like one guy might have looked down and seen Him writing "Betty Jo Johnson" and then been all "OK, see you guys later."

They went back and forth like this with Jesus a long time. What they really wanted was to kill Him, but they couldn't do it under the Law. They were kind of like those kids on the cereal commercial, going "Iiiiiiiiiiii'm not gonna kill Him, you kill Him!"

See, God had promised a Messiah a long time before this, as far back as the time of Isaiah and Daniel. The thing was, most folks expected a warrior, a King, someone who would drive out the Romans and restore the Kingdom. And for another thing, Jesus never came on real strong like "Hey, I'm the Messiah, follow Me!" He just said "Follow me" and let folks figure out for themselves Who He was.

Well, finally, they all had about enough, and they went and took Jesus to the High Priest. He said, are you the Messiah? And Jesus said, You said it. So, like, people who follow Me say it, and now the people trying to kill Me are saying it. In other words, there wasn't any mistaking Who He was and what they were doing. So they turned Him over to the Romans. Now, the Romans didn't want to kill Him. They didn't see anything wrong with a guy saying He was a god. They had a hundred gods anyway, what did they care?

Now, ya'll know the story. They crucified Him.

Now, remember in the Law, the whole lamb thing? Remember how it had to be perfect, without blemish? This is how come they call Jesus the Lamb of God. And remember that big old curtain in the Temple that divided God's half of the room from man's half? When Jesus died, the Bible says, this curtain ripped right down the center, so that there wasn't anything separating God from man any more. That was it.

Now, if you believe this stuff, or even if you just understand it, then maybe you understand why He died like that. Remember how I said that God is love, but God is also judgement? Well, because he loves us, He took the judgement on Himself. Anyway, this is what I believe, and what Christians have believed for centuries.

Now, as if it's not enough that He died, He also did something else. He came back. You know, before I understood all this, I didn't really get this part. If all this stuff about the Law and the sacrifice is true, and if He became the ultimate sacrifice Himself, why did He have to come back? Isn't it like a big show or something? I don't know. But somebody once told me that Death just couldn't hold Him. That He conquered Death. That it really was all over.

Any questions?

 

 

Well, sure. Anyway it's how I explain stuff.