Andy Stanley - Ninety Part 1 For The World

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This series is actually just a journeying with Jesus from
the time he stepped onto the pages of history as
an adult to the time that he was crucified and
ultimately rose from the dead. We're gonna look at some
of his most significant conversations. We're gonna look at his
most significant encounters, his most significant teaching, from.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
His introduction to being a teacher in.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
The world to ultimately going on to be a sacrifice
for the sins of the world. And the thing that
we're gonna talk about throughout this series that may be new. Honestly,
it may be a bit disturbing. When we get to
week four, you may wonder whether or not you should
continue with us. What we're gonna talk about and focus
on is the thing that I think is most missed
about the life in the person of Jesus, and it's

(00:42):
one of the reasons perhaps you've been so confused by religion.
Maybe why you've been so confused by church and Christianity
Jesus when you read the Gospels, it couldn't be any clear.
I don't know how we've missed that Jesus came into
the world to introduce something brand new to the world.
He did not come to extend something that was all.
He did not come to simply complete the Bible so

(01:02):
we'd have both a New Testament and an Old Testament.
He didn't come to create Judaism two point zero. That
he came to do something brand new to the world.
Brought something brand new to the world, and not just
to the world, but for the world, as we're going
to talk about today. Now, every headliner needs a warm
up act, somebody to come out and get the crowd
all warmed up. And interestingly enough, in the first century,

(01:24):
Jesus had a warm up act. He really did, from
the Jordan River basin, draped in animal skins with locust breath.
Please welcome, Okay, John the Baptist steps onto the pages
of history, really literally as the opening act for Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Now you've heard of John the Baptist.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
The reason he was called John the Baptist is not
because he wasn't John the Methodist, or John the Presbyterian,
or John the Episcopalian. He was called John the Baptist
because John, as far as we can tell in history,
this is pretty significant. John is the first person who
ever manhandled another person and baptized them. Baptism at this
point in the first century was part of a multifaceted
process that another Jewish person would go through to become Jewish.

(02:02):
There was a meal, there were things you had to learn,
and then as part of becoming a Jewish person or
being part of the Covenant, you had to be baptized.
And baptism was a ceremonial washing where you decide, I'm
dying to my gentileness and I'm coming alive to my Jewishness.
But you did this alone, or you certainly no one
was touching you when you did this. And John the
Baptist comes to the Jordan River and he's actually physically

(02:25):
baptizing people, and so he got this nicknamed John the Baptist,
John the Baptizer. Now there are four gospel accounts of
the four accounts of the life.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Of Jesus, as you know, martthew Mark, Luke, and John.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
And Luke, who opens his account by saying, and you're
gonna hear me say this anytime I mentioned Luke. He
opens his account by saying, I thoroughly investigated all of
these things, and I have created for you a chronological
account of the things. And I love this of the
things that happened in our mits, that happened here that
Luke was writing history. And here is his introduction to Jesus,

(02:58):
opening act John the Baptist. Here's how we put it.
In the fifteenth year, in the fifteenth year of the
reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Emperor of Rome, who followed
Caesar Augustus, when Pontius Pilot was governor of Judea, that
whole area, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee, that other large area,
his brother Philip Tetrarch of Iteria, and Trachonidas and Licinius

(03:22):
tet Trarch of Abilene during the high priesthood of Annas
and Caiaphas. Now, if you ever read the Bible, you
get to these parts and you go yah, yeah, yea, yeah, whatever.
Let's get to the good part. Right, this is extraordinary.
Let me tell you why this is extraordinary. This is
Luke saying to skeptics, fact.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Check me, I dare you.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
In other words, this is not a long time ago
in a galaxy far far away. You know, it doesn't
really matter if it ever happened. I'm about to tell
you a story. This is not once upon a time
in a place you never heard of Luke saying, no,
what I'm about to tell you happened in history. And
what he does is remarkable because he so meticulous. In fact,

(04:01):
anytime we get to the teachings of Luke, there's there's
so much detail. He is a historian's dream. He says,
let me start at the macro level, the Emperor of Rome,
the governors of Judea and Galilee, the subgovernors of the province,
the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem. Do I

(04:22):
have your attention? Is everybody with me? Does everybody know
what period of time I'm talking about and who these
people are? And his first century audience was like, we
are with you, and historians who don't even take the
account of Jesus life and Luke seriously are like, this
is amazing stuff. And he goes on and he says this,
here's what happened. The Word of God came to John.

(04:43):
This is John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah, in
the wilderness, and people went out to him from Jerusalem
and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.
Now Luke has thoroughly investigated these things, and here's what
he's saying, he saying, look, this isn't a dozen people
listening to a crazy man preach on the side of
the Jordan River. Okay, at the bank of the Jordan River.
All of Jerusalem, all of Judea. Judea is like this,

(05:07):
enormous area and the whole region went out to see John.
So thousands of people are going down to the middle
of really nowhere. That's difficult to get to, especially if
you're from Jerusalem. If you were in Jerusalem, it would
take you'd have to get up before sunrise, you'd get
there after sunset and hope the next day you could
find this guy. So this is not a convenient trip.
And on the banks of the Jordan River, John the

(05:29):
Baptist begins to preach and teach.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
And thousands and thousands and thousands of people came. And
this was a problem.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
This was a problem because every once in a while
in Judea or Galilee, somebody would rise up and be
a wannabe messiah, and the Jewish leaders would have to
try to calm them down before there was an insurrection,
and then Rome would have to get involved, and then
it was bloody, and then the Roman governor would have
to sit down with the temple leaders and say, look,
can you keep these people under control, because if you
can't keep them under control, we'll keep them under control.

(05:58):
You won't like the way we keep them under control.
And thanks to King Herod and his sons, things had
gone along pretty well for a few years, and suddenly
on the banks of the Jordan River there's this guy
who's saying all kinds of things, preaching all kinds of things,
and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in the
region show up to listen to him. But it wasn't
just the sermons that disturbed the temple leaders. They showed

(06:23):
up confessing their sins. Now, this is unheard of. Now
we read this as English Bible readers in the twenty
first century, it's like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
So what, No, this was unheard of.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
You see, the Jewish people in the first century and
the centuries preceding the first century, they had a very
sophisticated system for how you confessed your sins. There was
a way you did this, there was an order of things,
and ultimately, if you lived in the vicinity of Jerusalem,
you went to the temple and you brought a sacrifice,
and there were certain sacrifices and certain things that you
sacrificed for certain kinds of sins, certain kinds of things

(06:53):
you had to say to the priest or the high priest,
are they not so high priest? Or the priest assistant
or you Perhaps if you didn't live close to Jerusalem,
you went to the synagogue, but you found somebody in charge,
you found an official, You found somebody with some authority,
and you confessed your sin, and you decided what you
would have to do to be forgiven and what kind
of hoops you would have to jump through, much like
many religious systems have today.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
So here's a.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Nobody in the middle of nowhere, and people are confessing
their sins to him. He's acting like a walking talking temple.
You know who is this guy. But it wasn't just
confessing sins. It was the thing that gave him his
nickname that was most disturbing at all. Not only do
they confess their sins, and they were baptized by him
in the Jordan River. Now, if you're gonna be baptized

(07:36):
within the context of what baptism meant in the first century,
you had to have permission.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
There was You couldn't just show up and be baptized.
How do we even know what that meant?

Speaker 1 (07:44):
And besides that, these are Jewish people, and Jewish people
don't need to be baptized, they're already Jews, They're already
part of the Covenant of Abraham. This was so extraordinarily disruptive.
No authority, no education, no backing, nobody behind him, no explanation,
just this wild eyed, crazy preacher in the middle of

(08:05):
nowhere making claims. In the whole countryside.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Flocked to hear him.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
The text tells us that he came John Matthew, Mark Luke, John,
not John the Baptist, John that followed Jesus that ultimately
wrote this down. He says he came John the Baptist,
came as a witness to testify, and the Greek it's
like he came as a witness to witness, or a
testifier to testify. Same word, he came as a witness
to testify concerning that light. Because when John the gospel

(08:33):
writer John referred to Jesus. It's so fascinating. We've talked
about this. This is John who saw the whole thing,
and we're going to talk a lot about John in
the weeks to come.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
But John is an older man.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Looking back as he tried to wrap his mind around
the fact that Jesus, his friend, was a body, was
a physical person, and yet he contained this light that
was light for the whole world.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
So he used that imagery. He came.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
John the Baptist came as a witness to testify concerning
the light, so that through him all all might believe.
And John, John the Baptist, John testified concerning him. He
cried out, saying, this is John the Baptist. Now, this
is what he was preaching about. This was his message.
He cried out, saying, this is the one talking about
Jesus who hadn't shown up yet. This is the one

(09:15):
that I spoke about when I said, he who comes
after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
It's like, okay, what, John, You're gonna.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Have to back up.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yes, he he who comes after me, he's not here yet,
has surpassed me because he was before me. Okay, what
are you talking about. John's like, Okay, maybe I went
through through that too quickly. I'm just telling you I
got here first, but he got here before I got here.
But you haven't seen him yet. And when he shows
up all my goodness.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Get ready.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
And then a little foreshadowing, as John the Gospel writer
John describes John the Baptist message, for the law. For
the law was given through Moses. Now here comes the tension.
Here comes foreshadowing. We have tension that will follow Jesus
through his entire ministry. For the law was given through Moses.
And as you know, in the first century, the law

(10:04):
was everything to the Jews. For many Jews today the
law is still everything. And the law was housed in
the Temple and the Holy of Holies. It was the
place that only the high priests could go.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Once a year.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And they tied a rope around his ankle. This is tradition,
says they tied a rope around his ankle. In case
he died in there, they'd pull him out, because nobody's
going in there. And so in the Temple as the
Holy of Holies, and in the Holy of Holies, is
that whatever was left over of the Ark by this
time in history, there probably wasn't any part of the
Ark of the Covenant left, but there was some semblance
of the Word or the text or the scripture, the Torah,

(10:34):
the Law of God, the Law was everything. Moses was everything.
Moses was the lawgiver. Rabbis could comment on the law
of Moses, but you didn't create new laws. Rabbis could
illustrate the law of Moses, but you didn't create new laws.
You could talk about it, but you did not mess
with it. The Jewish law governed every facet of Jewish
life in the first century. People died for the Torah,

(10:58):
people died to protect the temple. And so John says,
looking back at this incident with John the Babbist showing
up on the river bank, he says, the law was
given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
This was a contrast.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Something new was in the works, something new was coming.
This is not an end, this is an instead of Now, this.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Was John's testimony.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
This was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem
sent priests and levites to ask him who he was.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
So here's what happened.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So there's this big disturbance. All this stuff's going on
the Jordan river. Nobody's shopping at the temple. Everybody's shopping
down at the new mall, you know, down by the river.
So all the people up at the temple are thinking,
you know, what's going on, and all the temple leaders
are nervous. So the temple leaders, the high Priest and
his folks, get the sort of the underlings, you know,
the not so high priest and the not so cool levites,
and they say, look, it's a long way to the
Jordan River. Would you go down there and find out

(11:57):
what's going on, get a report and find out who
this guy is. See if you can get an appointment
with him, and then come back and tell us what's
going on, because you know, we don't want to go.
We don't want to we don't want to mess with that.
It's a long way down there, and who knows what
we would run into. And so the high Priest and
the temple in Jerusalem, you know, a little ba more
than a day's journey away, sends this group of people
to find out who is John the Baptist and what

(12:20):
is his message all about? And he John did not
fail to confess, but confess freely. And this is kind
of the picture. I don't know if this is accurate,
but the way it's written, it looks like John's doing
his thing.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know, he finishes a sermon and baptize.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
A few people stepped out of the Jordan river, and
he sees the guys in the black robes all coming
down with their cool tassels, and everybody's making a way
for them because they carry authority. They've come from the
Jerusalem and they're making hi their way toward him, and
John knows what they're gonna ask. They want to know
who are you and by who's authority? Are you doing
these things and preaching these messages? And are you another
wanna be pretend Messiah? Because you know those happen every

(12:55):
once in a while, And if you claim to be
the Messiah, you got to come to Jerusalem. We got
to ask you a few questions, and you know, find
out what's going on. So he knows what they've come
to ask, and it says, if before they get to
him and ask him the question, he goes ahead and
the answers, and he says, I am not the Messiah.
Before they got to ask the question, I know what
you're here for. No, I'm not the Messiah. So they said, well,

(13:16):
then are you Elijah? And the reason to ask are
you Elijah is because the last book of the Old Testament,
the Jewish scriptures the Jewish the Hebrew Bible is in
the English version of it is Malachi, and Malachi was
the last prophet. In fact, when Malachi finished, he turned
off the lights, shut the door, and left. And no,
God didn't say anything for four hundred years, or there's
no evidence or any written revelation from God for four

(13:37):
hundred years. But in Malachi, the prophet Malachi says, before
God does his next big thing, before Messiah, before the
great day of the Lord, there will be a prophet
Elijah that comes in the spirit of Elisha or perhaps
the reincarnated Elishah, and he's gonna come and.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Prepare the people.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
So they're like, okay, well, if you're not the Messiah,
are you the guy that comes before the Messiah? Are
you Elijah? Said Elijah, but Elijah and he says, no,
I'm not him. And they said, well, then are you
the prophet because Moses and the Kumaran community had taught
that there would be some great prophet that rose up
to prepare the people before God did something greater, his

(14:15):
next big thing in the nation. And he answered, no,
that's not who I am either. So finally they said, okay,
enough with these silly questions. Who are you give us
an answer to take back to those who send us?
What do you say about yourself? I mean we can't
go back home and say, well, we know who he's not.
We gotta know who he is. We gotta know who's authority.

(14:36):
And you're in who's authority you're speaking? And where did
you get these crazy ideas? And come on, you can't
let people confess send down here at the river, you
confess sin up on the hill at the altar in Jerusalem,
you're acting like a portable temple.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
What's up? Who are you?

Speaker 1 (14:49):
And John replied by quoting the prophet Isaiah. He said,
I am So you want to know who I am.
I'm the voice. I'm just the voice. I'm not the guy.
I'm not the one. I'm not the person. I'm just
a voice of one calling into wilderness. That's why I'm
not in the temple. It's not why I'm up and
not on the hill. I'm the voice of one calling

(15:10):
in the wilderness. Make straight the way for the Lord.
In other words, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready,
get ready. God is about to do his next thing.
I'm just the warm up act. I'm just here to
gather the people and to get people to be prepared
for what God is about to do. And those who
have pure hearts will recognize what He's up to. And

(15:31):
those who are ready, and those who've repented of their sin,
and those who have opened their minds and opened to
their hearts to the fact that God is about to
do something new, those will be the people who recognize
God's next move. And so that's why I'm here, And yes,
I'm allowing people to confess their sins, heads up. Something
greater than the temple is about to come.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
The Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, and they said, well,
why then do you baptize If you're not the Messiah,
nor Elijah, nor the Prophet.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Okay, if you're not.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Any of these people, what about this baptism thing. I mean,
nobody's ever done that before, you've even got a nickname.
I mean, what's up with that? And he says, I
tell you what, I baptized with water. He kind of
avoided their question. I baptized with water. John reply, but
I'm telling you, among you stands one you do not know, literally,
one you do not recognize. And guys, look around you

(16:26):
think I'm a big deal. You think I've drawn a
big crowd. You think I've unsettled things. You think I've
made you nervous, and your boss is nervous, pilot nervous.
You think this is something big. You've not seen anything yet.
He the one who's to come after me, the main act.

(16:48):
He is the one that he is, the one who
comes after me and the straps of his sandals. I'm
not even worthy to untie.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I'm a nobody. I mean, I look like a somebody.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Look at this crowd, But I'm telling you, compared to
who's coming next, I am a nobody. I am not
even worthy to bend down and unlace his sandals. Well
that's not much of an answer. So they go back
up to Jerusalem. It's like, okay, we know who he's not.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
We're not sure who he is.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
He quoted some verses from our scripture, and so the
High Priest and his guys are like.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh, okay, we're gonna have to go down there ourselves.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Now, this was a really bad decision on their part,
but they decided to do it anyway. So they get
up Waly in the morning and they probably come with
a caravan with tents and food and all. I mean
it's an entourage for sure, all tricked out SUVs. You know,
they're this is because they're like the guys, you know,
and the people have so much respect for these people.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
I mean the high priests.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I mean, this is the guy that gets to go
into the Holy of Holies. I mean, this is like
when this group shows up, everybody gets out of the
way and they kind of bow. I mean, these are
the people that when you bring your grain offering and
your goat offering and your kids to the temple for
the first time, it's like there's so and so, and
there's so and so, and they're perfect. They smell good,
they look good, they dress well, they keep the law.
If God was gonna, if God was gonna do anything

(18:03):
in the world, this would be the first group to know.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
And so they show up.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
And again John's doing his thing and he's preaching and
teaching and baptizing people, and he sees up on the
hill here they come and kind of snake in their
way down to the Jordan River basin.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
I mean, it's a whole bunch of people and they're
all riding donkeys and mules.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
I mean, this is a big deal. I mean that
first group that was kind of a big deal. This
is like a really big deal. And the people are
stirring and they're talking. They're looking over their shoulder because
they've never seen these folks even leave the city of Jerusalem,
and here they are to see John. I mean talk
about gifts John some status. I mean they came to him.
He didn't even have to go to them and make

(18:42):
an appointment. This is a big deal, a big day.
The crowd parts and they make their way toward John.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Imagine this moment.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
And there's John with his disheveled hair and his overgrown
beard and whatever animal skins he's wearing, smells like he
used to live his whole life outdoors. And here comes
the most sophisticated, buttoned up, oiled hair group of people
that you know in the nation. And as they get
closer and closer and closer, before they're close enough to

(19:12):
have a private conversation.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Here's what happened.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
But when he saw many, not just a few, many
of the Pharisees and Sadducees, two groups of people will
talk about later, who didn't even get along coming to
where he was, He said to them out loud, in
front of everyone, you brewed of vipers. I mean, a
hush went over the crowd. Nobody talks to these guys

(19:40):
like this, Are you kidding? I mean, these are the
holiest of holy These people their full time job is
to be good.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
That's what they do. What do you do?

Speaker 1 (19:47):
I'm good, I'm just good. I'm so good that if
God were to do something, I would recognize it. I'm
a good person. And he says to them, you brewed
of vipers? Who warned you? Because see, everybody coming to
the Jordan River was coming to be baptized repent of
their sins, and all of a sudden, it looks like
they're coming to be baptizing to repent of their sins.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
He knew better.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
The people wondered, who warned you to flee from the
coming wrath? Something is coming? You think I'm something, I'm nothing.
Something is coming. Who warned you to flee from the
coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Now talk
about a dig I mean there was a murmur in
the crowd. Essentially, John the Baptist is telling the holiest
men in the whole country repent of your sin, and

(20:27):
don't tell me you prayed some magic prayer in the
privacy of your home.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
I want to see fruit, I want to see evidence.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
These are the law keepers and Jesus and then John
the Baptist was saying, you're law breakers, and I know
what's in you. And here's the tension, here's the friction,
here's the grit that would be part of the story
of Jesus of Nazareth throughout his public ministry. It started

(20:56):
right here because John the Baptist was given everybody a
head up. In fact, he's given you a heads up,
giving me a heads up. He was given his audience
a heads up that the days of compassionless, the days
of compassionless loophole religion.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
We're coming to an end. We're coming to a close, the.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Days where you can hide behind your walls and pray
secret prayers and give secret money and nobody knew what
you were doing. And then, you know, have a lack
of compassion because well, no wonder she's sick, and no
wonder he's dying, and no wonder he's blind because he's
sin or his parents sin. And you know, I don't
really have to take care of my aging parents because
what do you know, Mom and Dad, I'm so sorry.
I devoted everything to God. Now I get to live
off of it. But I can't help you because I

(21:41):
gave all my wealth to God. Good luck in your
old age. John, the badness gives him a heads up
that is coming to a screechy halt, that is coming
to an end.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Prepare yourself for the wrath of God. Oh you religious leaders. You.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
It was a very short conversation, and they turned around
and the left, and then it happened. The moment the
nation had been waiting for, the moment the world, even
though the world didn't know, had been waiting for. Here's
how it went down. Then at all this all happened

(22:21):
at Bethany.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Noticed the detail.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
This all happened at Bethany. Well, Bethany, Oh, yeah, on
the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing the.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Next day after they left.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Apparently the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him.
No animals, no caravan, no food, no tents, no entourage.
He saw Jesus coming toward him. Now, let's just pause
in this moment and imagine, in this moment, there's Jesus,

(22:52):
who knows who Jesus is, and.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
There's John the Baptist, who knows who Jesus is. And
in this.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Moment, perhaps time could stand still for just a moment,
and John sees Jesus, and Jesus sees John. And this
is the hinge, this is the transition. This is an
encounter that would ultimately change the world because in this encounter,
Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, steps into history

(23:18):
as an adult God in a body for the first
and probably last time, is about to go public.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
And things would never be the same.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
In fact, regardless of whether you're a religious person or not,
or a Christian, or maybe you're part of another religion
or no religion, or you used to be you grew
up in church and something happened. Here's what's undeniable in
this moment, in this moment, in this moment, things begin
to change and they would never go it would never

(23:47):
go back in the box. And we are here today
and there are people all over the world today gathered
in the name of Jesus, and this was the moment
it all began. And think, this is the part I
can't get over. I don't even know if I know
how to talk about it accurately. Think about how fragile
this moment is. It's just two men. It's just two

(24:09):
men in a world where people's lives can be snuffed
out with no accountability and no trial afterwards, just these
two men. The whole thing hangs in the balance of
there's two men. And all eyes are on John the Baptist.
They've been on him for a while, and.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
He says, I love this.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
He says, look, look, not believe, not imagine, not pretend,
not check your brain at the door, not.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Don't look over there.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
You might not like it and may not like what
you see. John the Baptist invites his audience.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I think he invites you. I think he invites me.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
He says, look, and everybody turns, and he says, look
the Lamb of God. And for those who had grown
up in Jewish Sunday school, they all knew the story.
Maybe their minds went to that story they've been taught
as children, when Abraham was going to sacrifice his own
son and God provided a lamb, And John says, look,

(25:21):
the lamb of God. The lamb that literally, the lamb
that comes from God, literally, the lamb that God provided,
that God has provided Look, there's the lamb of God
who takes away, who lifts up and carries off And
everybody in that audience knew what what the point of
providing a lamb was, Who lifts up and carries off

(25:43):
the sin?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
The sin?

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Wait?

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Wait wait, John, wait, this is going too fast for us. Okay,
you were baptizing.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
That was weird. We were confessing our sins.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
We are so many miles away from Jerusalem, We're so
many miles away from the temple, were so many miles
away from the altar. And now you're saying that God
has provided a lamb. And he didn't provide the lamb
at the all in the temple the way it's supposed
to go down. He's provided a lamb way out here,
in the middle of nowhere for a whole bunch of nobodies.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
This is this is moving too fast. It's all so new.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
But that was nothing compared to what came next. If
all their categories had not been blown up until that point,
this is where they just could no longer suspend their imagination.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Who comes to take away the sin of the world? Okay, John, Wait, Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
God, God, God's gonna forgive all the sin in the world. Yeah,
even I mean even non Jewish sin, like the sin
of our enemies, Roman sin. John, why would he do that?

(26:53):
I mean, come on, John, you're a good Jewish boy.
You know this, Jesus, hang on.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
For just a second. We gotta we gotta talk about this, John.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Look.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Look, our entire religious system, John, you know this, Our
entire religious system is designed to keep us separated from
the world. We don't eat their food, we don't wear
their clothes, we don't marry their daughters. Their sons don't
get to marry our daughters. We don't even go in
their homes. They don't even come into our homes. In fact,

(27:20):
up at the temple there's only a little bitty area
that they can even go into either the rest of
it's you know, designed just for Jewish people or people
who've converted to Judaism in the first century kind of way.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
I mean, come on, John.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Our whole history is marked by struggle against the other nations.
Our whole history is marked by struggle against foreign gods,
in fact, foreign nations. In fact, anytime there are foreigners
on our land, we just assume we're under the judgment
of God. And if God were for us, he would,
you know, throw them out of our land. I mean,
come on, we're waiting for a messiah. This like Joshua,
who's gonna come expel the enemy. I mean, our whole

(27:53):
frame of reference is us and them, and God is
for us and he's not for them. And you're telling
us that God has provided to Lamb to take away
the sin of the whole world, that instead of being
against somehow we're to believe that God.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Is four.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
This was the tension that Jesus stepped into. This was
the tension that created so much conflict, and as we're
going to see, this is a tension that continues to
create conflict for some of us today because perhaps this
is the part No one told you that Jesus was
a bridge between two covenants, that Jesus was a bridge

(28:38):
between two value systems, that Jesus was a bridge between
two different sets of laws and commandments, that Jesus was
a bridge between two different world views, and that God,
long before Moses, had promised Abraham that he would become
a family that would become a nation, and through that nation,
the entire world would be blessed. Through the centuries that ensued,

(29:01):
the nation of Israel somehow lost sight of the fact
that they were not the end. They were simply a
temporary means to a glorious world wide end. That they
were God's chosen people. But they were God's chosen people
as if they were a cocoon, and.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
From that cocoon would be birthed life and light for
the whole world.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
And John the Baptist point was to prepare people and
to cause them to think back and to remember that
we are a.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Means to an end.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
And the good news is the end has come, that
God is finally going to do that thing that we
prayed for, looked forward to, and celebrated as we thought
about the future.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
That he was the bridge between.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
An old and new covenant, and he was born under
one to introduce the other. He was born under one
covenant to introduce and ultimately, as we'll see, to cancel
out the other. The first covenant was a covenant between
God and a nation that was instituted on Mount Sinai
when God I brought Moses up and gave Moses all
the commandment, six hundred plus commands, and said, this is

(30:04):
how you are to operate.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
This is how the civil law is to be.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
This is how the nation is to operate as I
prepare them for what I will ultimately do in the world,
because ultimately I will establish a new covenant, not with.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
The nation, but with all the nations.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
But come on, you notice from personal experience, transitions are hard,
aren't they. Transitions are stressful, that old ways die hard,
that those who profit most from the status quo are
least inclined to let it go, isn't that true? And
when Jesus showed up this is difficult for some of us,
maybe because of how we were raised. But when Jesus

(30:44):
showed up, the temple system was very wealthy, very powerful,
and according to Jesus, it was totally.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
From top to bottom corrupt.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Jesus never had one good thing to say about the
temple or the temple system in his ministry.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
This, this is difficult for us. For those of us
who grew up in Sunday School, we know that.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
God ultimately established the sacrificial system. He didn't establish the temple,
but he established the sacrificial system and the ark of
the Covenant and the tent of Tabernacle and all those
things that were to remind Israel that they were his
special people. But when Jesus showed up, it was so
corrupt he had nothing good to say about it. And
this very system what ultimately joined forces with the kingdoms

(31:26):
of this world Rome and crucify him. But what was
designed to be an end was only the beginning of
something brand new. Jesus came to establish three new things,
and we'll close with this, because this is basically what we're.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Going to talk about for the next few weeks.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
He came to establish, as I've already said, a brand
new covenant, a brand new arrangement between God and mankind,
a brand new arrangement between God and you. He came
to replace the old one with a new one. And
here's the part that we'll struggle with for the next
few weeks. He came to replace the value system and
the teaching of everything between Exodus and Malachi in your

(32:12):
English Bible, in fact, the version of faith that you
grow up with, it was perhaps confusing, and you read
the New Testament and the Old Testament, and you think,
how do these two things go together?

Speaker 2 (32:22):
And if your.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Pastor was like so many pastors, pastors have a tendency
to shave off all the rough edges of the New
Testament and shave off all the rough edges of the
Old Testament to try to make them work together. And
we're going to discover that Jesus never suggested any of that,
that Jesus was gonna say, as we'll see in week four,
you can put a fork in it, you can put.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
A bow on it. It's done. It's over.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
The new has come and the old has passed away.
The Bible is God's word, but every word in the
Bible is not for everybody. And when we think it is,
we create unnecessary confusion. In fact, if you think it is,

(33:03):
it may be the reason you left the Christian faith.
In fact, I'll say this, as I've said so many times,
if you left the Christian Faith for anything in the
first half of your Bible, I think you may have
left unnecessarily to stick around. The second thing that Jesus
came to introduce that was new was a new command.
This is so powerful. We'll get to this that Jesus.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
And this was such a point of contingent.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
And again, as English twenty first century Bible readers, we
missed this. This was such a point of contingent because
there was.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Only one lawgiver and the lawgiver was.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Moses, and Jesus kept setting himself up against Moses, and
they would be like, who do you think you are?
Moses said, Moses said, Moses said, And in Jesus' most
famous sermon, he said, you have heard it said, but
I say, you have heard it said? But I say,
and they're going, yeah, we've heard it, said Moses said it.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Who are you to set yourself.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Up against Moses? There is only one lawgiver? Who do
you think you are?

Speaker 2 (33:52):
And Jesus would come along. This is so powerful.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Jesus would come along and take six hundred plus commandments
and reduce it to two, and then and then, in
his final act, he reduced it to one, a single
command a single commandment that would serve as the unifying
ethic for his brand new movement.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
You me the Church.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
So Jesus makes his way down to the water. He says, John,
my friend, baptize me. And John's like, are you kidding?
I've just told all these people I'm not even worthy
to untie your sandals.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
I'm not going to baptize you, I think.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Jesus smiled and put his hand on his shoulder and says, John,
you must do this because this people, these people must
know that I'm willing to identify with the new that's coming,
the new that you've introduced, that we together are introducing
something new.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
And so I'm a part of you as you're a
part of me. So baptize me, my friend. And he did,
and so it began.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
God's promise to Abraham would finally be fulfilled through a
man who came as a lamb to take away the
sin of the world, your sin, my sin. But before
we get to that, there are sermons to preach, there
are stories to tell, there are diseases to heal, their

(35:25):
crowds to feed, and there are tables to topple.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
And why did Jesus do all of that? He did
all of that so his audience would know with certainty,
so that we could know with certainty that God was
up to something new for you, for me, and for
the world as ass