40 Matt Session 12

[Music] we are in session 12 of our review of the gospel of matthew starting at chapter 18. i should say in a sense ending at chapter 18 because section 12 session 12 is the way we're doing it we're doing it in 24 sessions 12 sessions puts us at the halfway point you'll notice of course in a 18 is not half of 27 chapters which means the last chapters are going to get some special treatment because of course they deal with the final week of christ's ministry so we've gotten a little ahead of the game in that sense so we'll have plenty of room to really deal with some of the issues forthcoming but we are in uh matthew chapter 18 tonight now just by way of review to get back up to speed most of you are aware of the fact that the gospels have a design there's four gospels with four points of view matthew being jewish presents jesus the messiah the mashiach nageed mark focuses on his servanthood he's really the emanuensis for peter we believe luke being a gentile doctor his focus is on jesus christ as the son of man and john the son of god john's the one that really tells you who he is in in the mystical sense and there are genealogies in each one support their basic present to everything in the every detail of these four gospels support the main theme uh the the jewish gospel matthew starts with the first jew abraham and carries it down through the legal line through joseph to jesus mark being uh interested in his his servanthood we don't really regard ourselves concerned with the the pedigree of a servant uh luke takes it from adam and takes it down through mary the bloodline john has a genealogy most people don't recognize the first few verses are really a genealogy of the pre-existent one in the lord jesus christ and they focus on math matthew and what he said marking what he did it's really a shooting script in a sense luke how he felt his humanity john how he who he was and uh they write to really focus on different audiences the matthew the jew mark and luke of the gentiles roman and greek respectively and john really is addressed to the church and the first miracle of each one reflects that perspective the last uh the closing of each one uh reflects that matthew the very jewish thing is with the resurrection mark has the ascension luke and john both set up their sequels luke closes with the promise of the spirit and of course the luke volume 2 we call the book of acts um follows through with the acts of the holy spirit and then john of course in effect has set himself up for the revelation and so there we are and we can go into there's more to this but that's just by way of a warm-up and of course we're focusing on on matthew but we will from time to time i'm not going to harmonize them all because that would take a little different approach but we will take from time time perspectives from the parallel gospels okay section one we went through the genealogy of jesus christ the birth of jesus christ the baptism of jesus christ the temptation of jesus christ and this the manifesto of the king the sermon on the mount that constituted the first seven chapters were what we considered section one and section two we had a serious chapters calming the storm the demonic the call of matthew and then these two interesting uh healings that seem to be linked by the holy spirit they may have not had anything to do with one another and yet the holy spirit links them up in a very strange way for for its own purposes and then we have 12 sent out response to john the baptist and sabbath issues the pardonable sin that constituted the second section chapter 12 closes section 2 and also is in effect a watershed chapter in the gospel of matthew because from chapter 12 on jesus changes his style chapter 12 they reject him they attribute his his uh miracles to satan and so from that point on uh he we notice and he fact expresses that in chapter 13 that from that point on he speaks in public only in parables he only explains things in private a very strange difference you need to understand so when you it's a it's it's a it ends the presentation of the kingdom to israel and uh so the rejection didn't just occur at the cross it record occurred actually in chapter 12. and uh so that's from that point on jesus will speak only in parables now jeff and so when we get to chapter 13 that's explained as we go through the seven kingdom parables then there's a series of chapters defeating the five thousand feeding the four thousand and see then the uh the time at caesarea philippi where peter has his finest moment who they say who do they say i am who do you say i am the arthur christ the son of god there's a as we went through those we got into the herod's and i won't take you through all those by review but i'll just mention a few that you really do need to know herod the great of course the one that slew the children in bethlehem herod antipas was his son and uh of care of the great he really wasn't a king he was a tetrarch just being just the galilee area actually uh he's the one that had john the baptist killed and before whom jesus was silent in luke 23 and elsewhere his son is herod agrippa and he's the one that slew james men in prison peter he was the grandson of herald great so we've got the great his son antipas and his son agrippa and then i grew up with the second before whom paul is tried so you'll run into these names when in acts when it's it's herod agrippa it's the son of the agrippa of the of the new testament or the earlier period i should say okay are we together okay so we have a herd the great his son his grandson is and his great-grandson um there are many others but those are the ones that you will really run into feeding the multitudes we had five thousand four thousand didn't we matthew 14 matthew 15. and uh one was predominantly jews the other is predominantly gentiles one took place in galilee in betheade and the other one took place at decapolis a gentile turf um one had five loaves and two fish left over the other one had seven loaves and a few fish holy spirit didn't tell you any fish because it's focusing for some reason on the seven interestingly enough and uh in the 5000 we had 12 baskets left over and the other we had seven baskets left over so we see some structuring going on here and if you're a normal well-adjusted person reading your bible you ignore those things just go on and enjoy the story if you've been to one of my bible studies of course you know you're no longer a normal well-adjusted reader because you'll remember that i i just always at least try to arouse a suspicion that these things might be very there may be meaning hidden behind all these uh the one was in the spring of the year and the other was in the summer one the crowd was with him one day and the other the crowd was with him three days really is there something else going on here bear in mind matthew was jewish so we want to use a jewish hermeneutic as we look at matthew and we'll talk a little bit more about that we went from in matthew 15 also we talked about the traditions of judaism in contrast to the commandments of god and we went through the fact that as you lengthen the tether to the text you tend to get in trouble mosaic judaism was based on the torah and when we speak of and most of us would think of judaism we think of the the writings of moses except they added what they call oral law oral traditions that led to pharisaical judaism from about 400 bc and following and that's what's prevalent during christ's ministry against whom he preaches again and again and again we find him in in conflict if you will with the pharisees who are adding things to what god said and that obviously uh creates increases the tension that those oral laws get codified in writing from the third through the sixth century a.d in what's called the talmud there's a jewish talmud which actually was done in tiberias and a babylonian talmud and interestingly enough the balmo the babylonian talmud is more authoritative of the two because the academy that produced it lasted essentially longer i guess but in the 12th century we encounter the strange collection of writings jewish mysticism known as the kabbalah and it is even further uh away from the the the rule of the the text itself the the laws of moses the 18th century out of that emerges hasidic judaism that you associate with what some people would call orthodox orthodox can mean many things but there's a specific uh style of that in new york and in israel called the the hasidim and with the black hats and the ringlets on the on their on the sideburns and so forth a ramez in hebrew is a hint of something deeper as we go through all those those uh passages we know why are the stories in the particular order they're not necessarily in exactly chronological order chapter 12 we have jesus rejected by israel chapter 13 we have the seven kingdoms parables which clearly are the church because they disclose things that were hidden in the hidden from the old testament and chapter 14 we have maybe another layer of insight beyond the direct narrative as we watch the the feedings and so forth and uh let's stand back from the whole picture we have herod introduced as the usurper king of this age who is living in open adultery that's what caused john the baptist to get in prison and ultimately killed he slaughters the prophet at the request of a woman and john of course was the closing of the old testament jesus highlights that in both matthew 11 and and luke 16. next we find people are fed in the wilderness in one case with 12 baskets left over which i suggest to you might represent a jewish symbol 12 tribes 12 disciples who are to judge the 12 tribes and revelation 7 we again have the 12 tribes emphasized and the lord deliberately sets them up in a boat in the middle of the sea while he prays on a mountain the boat typologically is after one great boat noah's ark which uh is kephar is is pitched within and without that word pitch is translated and every other chapter in the bible atonement and the sea of course is a type of the gentile nations so we have them preserved through a boat on the sea interestingly enough the lord's praying while this is going on the lord's praying for them while he's on the mountain mountain is a type of government from daniel 2 and elsewhere he's interceding for the boat on a stormy sea and then peter is the called out one is that the ecclesia is there something modeling here and we should remember as the callout assembly when we do fine when we have our eyes on him we take our eyes off him we think and peter taught us that lesson well so maybe there's a lot more going on here structurally than we're first aware of then we climax of what the transfiguration matthew 17. uh chapter 16 closed with the verse saying there are some of you that will see the kingdom of god and the next chapter gives them an opportunity and of course the transfiguration is a big deal of course we have but there are two ministries in the old testament that were unfinished moses and elijah interesting left they were unfinished and in matthew 17 we appear to have a staff meeting going on because uh peter in his first and second letter gives us allusions to what was discussed with the lord and moses and elijah while on that mountain and somehow is connected with the second coming there's that's that's the overtone and so and and these why these two why moses elijah well elijah had unique powers granted him fire from heaven and he shut the heaven for three and a half years and moses turned water into blood and plagues these are the same four powers that identify the two witnesses in revelation 11. that's one reason we take the view there are other defendable views but other people have different ideas we suspect that a lot moses and elijah or their direct representatives in some way are the two witnesses and uh so all the few all the elements of the future kingdom were present matthew 17. we have jesus in glory not in his humiliation moses is in glory radiant and shiny he represents the redeemed through death elijah's there in glory he represents those that have entered the kingdom through rapture or translation and uh interesting enough that's that's the viewpoint suggestion if that's the case who is peter james and john and they are israel or the remnant in the flesh the 12 apostles will rule over the 12 tribes as they come down the mountain there's a multitude of the foot of mountain that might be reviewing it be viewed as those that were brought in the kingdom after it has been established as described those are all just possibilities i'll leave to you that chapter closes with the issue of paying tribute attacks and jesus and they asked peter does the lord pay taxes he says sure yeah absolutely he spoke a little too quickly because it was a tax they did not they were not liable for necessarily but jesus says that's okay go go to get a fish and so forth turns out the fish the coin we're dealing with there is a a a two drachma coin a drachma is a day's wages so it's really four days wages worth of coin that's a non-trivial tax if you will many people think what's a temple tax they have all these other conjectures if they really do the homework it's clear that was a herodian or roman tax matthew i don't know he was a tax collector in the past okay which had given up that franchise okay okay so that closes well i should say this chapter with those will close section one so let's take a look at matthew chapter 18. at the same time came the disciples unto jesus saying who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven boy oh boy boy they they just got off the mountain with this transfiguration experience at least peter james and john did and now they're kind of uh you see the flesh show up their ambition shows up who's going to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven jesus then it's interesting little jesus called little child on him and set him in the midst of them said verily i say unto you except ye be converted and become as little children you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven and as we understand or try to understand what jesus is teaching them let's not lose sight of the context clearly jesus loves the children i'm not here to take away from any of that but he's doing something else too he's doing all of that in as a teaching lesson to them as a counter to this ambition who's going to be the greatest hey you got to be like a little child and and as he talks about little children realize that you can apply what he's saying about them to the disciples and you and me not because of our age but because of our need to be humble and as a little child whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the same shall be greatest in the kingdom of heaven see this is christ's rebuttal to their ambition and whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me wow boy does that create opportunities but whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he was drowned in the depth of the sea boy we could amplify that but i don't think we need to then we get to this interesting verse a verse you want to remember he says woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh we can talk about that the first one that pops into your mind is judas right he betrayed christ in psalm 41 verse 9 it was predicted in the psalms yeah my own familiar friend in whom i trusted which did eat of my bread hath lifted up his heel against me widely recognized by scholars as a as a prophecy of judas himself what did jesus say woe into the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come so judas was predicted that he would betray christ right did judas have free will or not well see a lot of people struggle with that when we were in in wyoming the students there that was one of the common questions that came up with it was this whole issue of the apparent paradox between predestination and free will if it's prophesied it feels like it's predestined they sound like the same thing and may in a way they are and yet that would seem to deny free will one of the things you need to recognize as we wrestle with that issue is it is only a paradox when you're viewing it from within the time dimension you and i are in the time dimension so to us it appears like a paradox but if you've taken a graduate course in paradox resolution which is a typical subject in advanced math and such one of the things you need to do is you get out of the box step step outside the restraints that you feel that you may that are imposed or you may feel are imposed on your problem god is outside time time we thanks to 20th century science we now know that time is a physical property it varies with mass acceleration and gravity so god is not somebody who's got lots of time he's outside time altogether big difference and he alone not the angels he alone knows the end from the beginning so you're free to do whatever you like and yet god knows what choice you're going to make when you get to a crossroads and you don't know which one you're going to take and you decide to pick one he happens to know which one you're going to pick in advance because he's outside time so for us we still have free will but god knows what you're going to do and that's one of the demonstrations of who he is by giving us prophecy by writing history before it happens that's the way he authenticates the bible you can't prove the bible yes you can you understand it's an integrated message and that it writes history before it happens you can prove that so yes judas could have repented he didn't have to do that but he did and we're going to examine the details of that when we get to later chapters in in the book of matthew but when jesus says woe into the world because of offenses that includes offenses plural all kinds we're talking a little bit about false teachers will there be false teachers absolutely does that mean the false teacher that's teaching falsely has no free will no he has free will god just is predicting advance through his apostles that's going to come and that's happening before our very eyes one of the guys that i would never want to trade places with is a guy that wrote a novel a guy by the name of dan brown called the da vinci codes a a very cleverly crafted story very deceptively presented preceded by a fact sheet which claims that everything in this thing is true and it's not it's fraud and it's deliberate knowing fraud with an agenda a knowing agenda of attacking the person of jesus christ and i wouldn't want to be in issues when he discovers when he stands before the judgment seat and discovers the guy in charge of the guy that he's been libeling for money man but that's not all that's going on satan's having a field day he that dan brown may not realize it he's an agency of satan and so are other people there's this national geographic hasn't even gone to press yet at the time i'm speaking here and already it's being talked about coast to coast they've got a feature article on the so-called gospel of judas the gospel of judas what's bizarre there's no reason this is not a recent discovery the the copy they're talking about was it was has was uh discovered in egypt in 1978 okay so this isn't like it's a hot thing they've chosen to do this because the so-called gnostic gospels are the foundation for dan brown's novel and when ron howard gets releases his movie uh which is going to be a blockbuster movie and it's going to be a create a tsunami across the world uh for discussion just as the passion and you know initiated an enormous amount of discussion on the reality of jesus christ and its many implications now this is doing the same thing uh for satan that movie is going to be talked about everybody's going to see that movie the people who are unbelievable will will see it obviously the people who are marginal christians will see it and get confused and the people those that are really serious about jesus christ may also go to see it for their for awareness reasons but will easily shred the fraud despite the fa the beautiful theatrics etc the gospel of judas so is surfacing just this time what on earth is the gospel of judas a text that was discovered in egypt it was written in coptic that was the language of ancient egypt for christians right up to about the ninth century it's a codex meaning it's a book with pages not a scroll which which is it dates it you know everything from the first second century on where codex is rather than scrolls typically scrolls were earlier so it's a it's a codex as it's called pages are badly damaged there are lots of lacuna those are blank spaces things that have been damaged for some reason that are difficult to fill but it's not hard to follow the the train of it and this is not a new discovery it's been lost for about 1700 years written in the third or fourth century still several centuries after the fact i understand but about 180 a.d second century a.d irenaeus knew of the book then so apparently was around back then um and he condemned it as heretical some people there's some some authorities say that most of most of the so-called gnostic gospels are written in the third and fourth century this is one of the earlier ones but it's still a gnostic gospel what on earth is a gnostic gospel gnostic gospels are not gospels at all first of all now gospel has verifiable it's a it's a history with verifiable data in it that you can check these aren't gospels at all they're speculative opinions totally devoid of any verifiable facts that makes them as even as a group they were all written under false pseudonyms false names as it in an attempt to gain legitimacy the gospel of thomas the gospel of mary the god there's there are all these in the early centuries and typically some in the second but many in the third and fourth people would dream these things up see they didn't have internet to blog with they had to do something so they they and some of them may have had agendas some of them may even been well intentioned who knows but they were falsehoods and the church recognized them at the time they never gained any legitimacy but the very fact that they're written under false names pretentious names made them ineligible to be part of the canon because that was the whole idea the early church rejected documents under pseudonyms as being inconsistent with the concept of god-breathed inspiration these guys were not dummies and they're all written furthermore they're written several centuries after the gospel period that's in contrast to the letters of paul and others that were contemporaneous with the events when paul wrote to the corinthians there were people in his audience that were in galilee and saw the resurrected christ when he appeared to 500 of them and that's so alluded there and so forth see if i was going to if i was going to sell you the idea that in november of 1993 in dealey plaza in dallas texas that jf john f kennedy was killed with a bow and arrow how many of you would buy that the reason you'd laugh me out of the room is because there's too many people around that saw it happen that's nonsense there may be other subtleties that we could talk about that aren't that well known but that's not the the those facts are facts and for me to try to fly a story in this generation would be ridiculous a couple of generations from now if you found a document that tried to describe how it all happened with the bow and arrow there might be some guys that would probably see maybe so you know we could go on to other examples but let's move on see a large number of these documents emerged in the centuries following the ministries and were universally rejected by the church and the copies of these were found a large bunch of these were found in 1945 at the hog hamani which is a place in accommodates in in egypt and most of these were dating from the third and fourth centuries the gospel of jesus is a little earlier but still a gnostic gospel and examples are the gospel of thomas that's the one that is used as a foundation stone for the da vinci code fraud but even so even if you accept what thomas said was true it still doesn't support the way they use it they're trying to prove that jesus was married to mary magdalene the gospel of thomas doesn't open that door at all in the gospel of philip the gospel of mary the gospel and about four dozen others these are gnostic gospels they're they're they're frauds obviously and uh scholars widely agree that none of these tests contain any historically reliable information and uh they're written in the second century later and it was a hero agnosticism was a heresy rampant in the roman empire from the second century on maybe even a little earlier its name came from the greek word kenosis which means to know and the whole idea was that they were in the know they believed that knowledge was the way to salvation and it was that way it's one of the reasons it was condemned as false and heretical by several writers the new testament we have new testament writers to come to our aid here and there are several different groups said what do the gnostics believe well it isn't as if they had a consistent belief within that group there's several very widely varying views all the way from high-minded ascetics on the one hand to los angeles charlotte's on the other and uh the claims they made is that we're all divine we have the spark of divine in us but we're trapped in a physical world that's evil when jesus came to give us knowledge of how to escape this world and get back to the what they call the kingdom of light where we really belong in gnosticism salvation is by knowledge have mysteries rather than the in faith in the atoning work of jesus christ and gnostic literature speaks of deities of powers of the universe such as the yaldabayoff the seth the barbello which is an emanation of the supreme much of this by the way echoes of the kabbalah which is a jewish in a sense a jewish form of the same thing sophia and others and the gnostic books have myths of creation involving emanations of the supreme being multiple heavens each with their rulers and so forth and so on and most of them see matter physical matter is evil and believe that jesus only appeared to have flesh that his physical body was a mere phantom the gnostics would tell you when jesus walked in the sand it didn't leave footprints and that was that's their mentality there's only one occasion i know that jesus walked and didn't leave footprints that was on when he walked in water yeah christ diagnostic is just a principle rather than a person it's interesting to me the parallel between autism kabbalah is surprising because in both cases there are attempts to de-personalize god to de-personalize god god's gone to such extremes to present himself as a person even becoming flesh and dwelling among us and we need to embrace that understand that so where do we find out about all this stuff well there are sources the best some of the best sources are right the new testament but one of the the refutations by the church fathers if you go through the church father text irenaeus is against heresies he wrote a whole diatribe in all of this hippolytus the refutation of all heresies the prophetic nais the panarian and tetrulian wrote against marcion there's a whole series of the antonescene fathers that shred this stuff but perhaps the most useful ones are the ones right in your lap condemned by the rise new testament paul emphasized a wisdom and knowledge that comes from god and not through idol speculation fables and moral laxity colossians 2 first timothy 1 2 timothy 2 titus 1 are just a few selections that you'll find in paul's writings john both in his gospel and in his epistles centered the his teaching uh on the uh then the heretical uh teaching uh that you would it would be called nasty and so forth a couple samples just a couple quick samples second timothy 4 for time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but after their own lust they will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned into fables and the colossians 2 8 which is a great summary verse were really worth part of your memory collection beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after christ boy we need to we need to hang on to that one let's get back to matthew 18 and keep moving here verse 8. wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee cut them off and cast them from thee it's better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire if that if thine i offend thee pluck it out cast it from me it's better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire and i think if we took that literally many of us would be very severely incapacitated this is what some what what a rhetorical device called a hyperbole he's saying that to get em as his way of emphasizing how serious it is take heed that you despise not one of these little ones see again he's the child is right still in the middle of them for i say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven this is matthew chapter 18 10 verse 10 is a validation of guardian angels i have to tell you candidly i was a very relatively mature christian but always somehow pr as a teenager or whatever i i always presume guardian angels is one of those little idioms that we just you know use you know in the same category as you know i don't know as as a colorful harmless legend or something i was frankly startled one day when i happen to be reading matthew 18 verse 10 realized whoops the concept of a guardian angel isn't just a colorful little tradition it's scriptural i think that's pretty cool you know that's pretty neat i do know that mine gets overtime you know i know that mine gets overtime now the question that there in hebrews chapter 1 verse 14 are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation this verse causes many to presume that guardian angels are just for the ones that are saved boy it's an argument from silence but it makes me nervous you know is that the way you get around that one is make sure you're saved the nature of angels you know it's interesting angels when you see them appear they don't always appear when they appear they're always in human form they were in sodom and gomorrah at the resurrection and the ascension there were two always in twos apparently they spoke took men by the hand they ate meals they're tangible when they want to be they don't have to be but they when they want to be they're capable of direct physical combat the passover in egypt is perhaps the archetype example of that one angel slaughtered 185 000 syrians one night after dinner i always wondered how many syrians were there there were there several hundred and they just slit every other man's throat or something i mean you know that that's always an impressive way to leave a leave a anyway i mention all of this to indicate i strongly suspect that fallen angels and demons are different things altogether because demons that we encounter in the new testament always are seeking embodiment even in animals as the last resort we talked about that before this is just by way of review let's get back to matthew 18 for the son of man has come to save that which was lost boy that's an important verse that's what he's all about how thinking if a man have a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray does he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seeketh that which is gone astray and if so be that he find it verily as unto you he rejoices more of that sheep than the 99 which went not astray obviously the one that we're getting the one that lost is a source of major joy when it's returned that's this point and i don't think there's i don't think we need to beat that i think it's pretty clear okay even so it is not the will of your father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish wow that raises another question we frequently get from concerned parents where do we get this idea that children below the age of accountability whatever that is um are saved well we get that from several places um you can build a pretty strong case that children before the age of accountability and that raises another debate and i don't have an answer to that one uh there's some traditional answers and there's probably you know it's god's judgment i'm sure um in second samuel 12 the incident of david is worth understanding and paul's strange remark in romans 7 is one to take a look at in second samuel 12 david was bemoaning his child that was ill and uh when the child when he gets a word the child has died he cleans up stops fasting gets dressed gets ready to go back to work and the servants are startled then said his servant said then what thing is this that that was done that it's fast and weep for the child while it was alive but when the child was dead that it's rise and eat bread see to them it looked backwards understanding i could understand their view and he said david said while the child was yet alive i fasted and went for i said who can tell whether god will be gracious to me that the child may live but now that he is dead wherefore should i fast can i bring him back again notice the next sentence i shall go to him but he shall not return to me so david's expectation is that he when he's with god will be with his side with his child there's another example i've i didn't make a slide for it in my haste haste makes waste i'm told and that's to take a look at the first and last chapter of the book of job in chapter one he has a list of animals a thousand of these 500 of those it's a whole list of animals and he has seven sons and three daughters and you know the story of job how satan incrementally wipes him out among that he of course loses all his animals and he loses his seven sons and three daughters and a lot of other things and we go through the dialogues and that whole thing not until finally at the end god steps in and even answers for job and so on but in the last chapter god rewards job for his diligence and his faithfulness by doubling everything he lost and you look at the list of animals and where there was a thousand there's now two thousand there's 500 there's every everyone has listed that we're listening chapter one there with twice the number and he also gets seven daughters and three i mean seven sons and three daughters and as you're reading that if you're attentive you're sort of disappointed i mean you know you got double everything else why didn't you get 14 sons and six daughters you know why the others are waiting for him he hasn't lost them they're up there waiting for him and when you realize that that can be very moving discovery to a parent that's lost a child but paul makes a strange remark in romans chapter 7 which we commonly call law school paul's definitive statement of christian doctrine we call the book of romans really defines what sin is all about what the law is all about it is your basic course in foundational theology but as in romans 7 where paul is dealing with the law and sin and all that he makes a strange remark at verse 9. i've given the first the verses on either side of that so you pick up the flavor of it paul says but sin taking occasion by the commandment that is the law wrought in me all manner of concubines for without the law sin is dead for without the law sin was dead then he gets to verse nine for i was alive without the law once but when the commandment came sin revived and i died and the commandment which was ordained to life i found to be unto death what on earth is paul talking about here i was alive outside the law without the law not without having it but being outside the law so to speak i i was alive without the law once but when the commandment came sin revived and i died how interesting most scholars not all yeah i'd say majority scholars believe that what paul is referring to here is his childhood before the age of accountability he's alive without the law he's not accountable to the law so he's alive when the law came when the law is in effect he's in trouble now we're together that's one of the basis why people believe that children before the age of accountability are saved and i think that's the prevailing opinion not anything in theology has controversy but i think it's a very widely held opinion and that's why if that's true when the rapture occurs it's going to be the biggest shock the planet earth has ever had bigger than the flood of noah in a sense every bit is pervasive well let's deal with torts torts are injuries that one person does to another and i want to talk a little bit about due process uh one of the most puzzling and painful experiences i've had is getting into professional christianity i came to the lord as a teenager had a love for the word of god through more than 60 years of study as a layman i taught the bible for 25 years at the monday nights at calvary chapel costa mesa and and subsequently uh before then and subsequently at other places i've loved the bible but i was a layman i was busy with my executive career and i have to be very candid about my executive career the lord allowed me to be at the right place at the right time and i was involved with and backed by some of the most outstanding personalities on the planet earth i look back on those days with great gratitude these were guys that weren't saved but they were guys of ethics and experience that i learned from precious lessons i look back at that now and realize i was spoiled because i took a lot for granted in the business world that i came from i've served on 12 public boards many more i've been 100 different deals in venture capital since but i've been served as a board on the board of directors of 12 public companies over a 30-year period only once that i can recall did we have to remove an officer for breach of fiduciary duty i've been in professional christianity for 15 years i've served on many boards in the christian field too various ministries i won't mention to be able to speak freely we've had to do it three times in 10 years 12 companies 30 years once a relatively few in 10 years at least three times some of that's just poor training but there's something goes deeper i want to talk about dealing with injuries personal injuries in that sense not physical injuries other kinds and i want to talk about due process matthew 18 verse 15 and following couple of verses is the core description of how we in the body are supposed to be dealing with these things jesus says moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy brother that's step one that works praise god if it doesn't you go to the next verse verse 16. but if he will not hear thee then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established that's not rocket science that's basic common law in fact that's where it gets that's where the common law gets it of course it's from the bible that makes sense i think so and if he shall neglect to hear them tell it unto the church that is the assembly but if you neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican another would you throw them out into the world him out of the fellowship i hesitated to insert here my little diatribe about gossip the most painful sin if you've been in any of our other studies but book of proverbs elsewhere we usually use this as a springboard to go through a series of verses in the scripture which deals with one of the most hurtful sins we can conduct they're probably bigger sins in terms of the gravity of them but there certainly are no more there's probably more pain caused by gossip than anything any of the other misconducts we indulge in it quietly does its unseen damage behind the scenes and slander is like toothpaste out of a tube you can't put it back in it's out and it's astonishing to realize how many scriptures deal with gossip what's even more astonishing to me the fact that the untrained and the non-diligent do that is bad enough what shocks me is to discover how many ministries are managed by hearsay there are some very prominent ministries that have littered the landscape with careers that have been crashed without any due process without being able to confront their accusers without having that facts certified by a couple of witnesses on hearsay one of the benefits of some of the denominations is that they have installed what we would call due process that if a pastor is accused of something there is a procedure that verifies the facts before actions taken and also gives him a chance to be confronted and even if he's guilty re-re-established by a process with the with the with the board of elders there is what they call law due proud there's a process but it's disturbing to discover how many ministries you have people whose careers and commitments are trash canned by what really is gossip and and uh ambitious contingent on a board whatever there's different factors involved that do it due process not management by hearsay i have been asked by a number of pastors to do a briefing package on this subject and i have declined to do that because i don't want to be a pawn in the politics of what's going on i'm aware of several situations that are tragic that isis that there are aspects of which i think are a stench in the nostrils of god but at the same time the situation's such that i can easily be a pawn to in the political process there there was an incident in orange county where the dean of a law school was accused by a student of plagiarism and it hit the press in which he was set aside from his job while the investigation goes on and anybody reading the paper that is legally sensitive must be shocked because he's lost his job and they haven't even finished their investigation that's called grounds for a lawsuit and i had the whole file brought to me and i recommended to the injured party that he do file a lawsuit but it's a church it's a corporation and uh i i i may not have been right don't misunderstand me but i that's what i invited advised him to do and i actually was quite delighted uh in the whole situation in a sense because here was a case study where a law school took the position publicly that matthew 18 doesn't apply to us that's for the laity can you imagine and it ended up getting settled and for a lot of reasons it doesn't serve purpose to go through all the facts situation but i was delighted because it wasn't in the usual denominational church setting it was a open publicly aired i could all my facts were in the file it wasn't like i was talking out of school but by some denomination or some church situation but anyway the the attitude tends to be you're guilty until proven innocent some pastor is accused of some impropriety the immediate presumption by many not everybody fortunately is that he's he has burden he's not burdened to prove himself i mean it's not he's not they're not burdened to prove that he's guilty he's on the defensive you see congregations want their pastors sinless i think there's something about that in the scripture too and does he get a chance to confront his accusers more often than not he doesn't i knew you'd go on and on let's just let's let's go on and on verse 18 verily jesus says verily i say unto you whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven whatsoever he shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven very important verse because the authority that he purports to have been given peter in luke chapter 16 of caesarea philippi isn't unique to peter a lot of people make a big case out of that wait a minute whatever that was is given here to all of them let's remember that as we start trying to interpret chapter 16 let's realize that peter isn't unique in that sense he he gives us whatever he's speaking all of them here whatsoever he shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven which whosoever whatsoever shall loose on earth shall be lost in heaven again i say to you that if two of you shall agree on earth that's touching anything that they shall ask it shall be done for them if my father which is in heaven for where two or three are gathered together in my name there am i in the midst of them boy it's a precious verse we quote it so often so glibly in some context let's really realize what that says do you believe it let's have an amen then okay all right then peter came to him and said lord how oft shall my brother sin against me and i forgive him kill seven times remember this passage we know this right jesus saith unto him i say not unto thee until seven times but until seventy times seven what do you make of that what's jesus saying that there's no limit that's what most people assume he's talking about right except it turns out there may be more behind to say i'm not saying that isn't a valid way to apply the verse i don't think you necessarily get a score pad and keep track okay i don't think that's what he's saying he's saying you know seven times thinking well gee i've i've i've forgiven you six times this is it brother you know that's not what he's saying i don't think he's saying you count to 489 and then the next one's it but that's the way it was with god it may surprise you here seven times seven the sabbath for the land was six years to cultivate seventh to rest that's in leviticus 25 verses one to seven right for 490 years israel failed to observe the sabbath of the land they did the sabbath of shabbat but not the land for 490 years they failed to keep the sabbath year of the land and in second chronicles 36 verse 21 it explains why it was that the southern kingdom went into captivity for 70 years the northern kingdom got wiped out totally the southern kingdom would have been wiped out except for god's commitment to david it wasn't that they deserved to have captivity and then come back it was god's commitment to david so they went to captivity for 70 years and then returned to the land to the day by the way but since they failed to keep the sabbath the land the lord said you owe me 70. and he sent them to captivity in babylon he forgave them 70 times seven and then called what was due and that's not a contrived uh uh perspective it's in second it's expressed in second chronicles 36 verse 20 21. now it's furthermore i think we're indebted to clarence larkin to have first published this in 1919 it's rather interesting from abraham to the exodus at least by one reckoning here was 505 years and because of genesis 12 and galatians 3 we have 75 plus 430 that adds up to 505 years but during that period there was a 15-year period that ishmael was the heir apparent before isaac was ordained so to be born and ordained well if you attack if you subtract 15 of that the usurper was around so to speak you've got 490 years that's curious especially when you look at from exodus to the temple it began in first kings six to eight is where it's begun and it was completed first king six thirty eight so uh uh so we got 494 plus seven so that's 601 years but during that period is a period called the judges where there were six servitudes mesopotamia the moabites canaanites medianites ammonites and philistines and if you take those passages and add up the periods of servitude it adds up to 111 years when you subtract the 111 years they're in servitude from the others again you get 490 years i think that's kind of interesting from the temple to the edict artaxerxes first kings eight that's a thousand five bc and nehemiah two it's 445 bc as we've reviewed many times we will again when we get to chapter 21 matthew that's 560 years but that from that we subtract the babylonian captivity in each of these cases the calendar period you take it and subtract the period that israel's in disfavor and you get always 490 years when you get to the 70 weeks of daniel the 69 weeks or 483 years there's an interval during which god is dealing with the planter through the church that has a terminus it'll be finished and god will once again be dealing with the earth through israel another seven remaining seven years the 483 plus seven is how much 490. so to summarize that it's interesting there have been at least there's apparently four different periods abraham to the exodus exodus of the temple temple of the nevada xerxes already xerxes the second coming each one is 490 years so when i see this i wouldn't make too much of it at the same time it's kind of provocative that jesus says 70 times seven i don't think he pulled that number out of the air it's actually an echo of israel's own history which leads to another perception that you need to understand of the rabbinical jew he believes that the messiah and the nation israel are always one one's a shadow of the other the history of the messiah and israel are in parallel with each other and in the gospel of john you'll discover that the seven miracles profile the history of israel and the the the man the apology of men he was infirmed for what 38 years exactly the time of the wilderness you can you can explore that when you get through the gospel of john on your second or third trip through okay verse 23 therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a certain king which would take account of his servants and when he began to reckon one was brought to him which owed him ten thousand talents boy a talent is nominally about a year's wage this guy owed a bundle wow for as much as he had not to pay his lord commanded him to be sold his wife and his children all that he had his payment to be made amen amen the servant therefore fell down and worshipped him saying lord i have have patience with me and i will pay the all i'd love to know what his plan was the lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt boy that's great it's one thing to lose him and we'll deal with that later that would be gracious but no he for he clearly unequivocally on the spot forgave the dead it was only forgiven it was off the shoulders can you imagine how he walked out of that room boy that same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants which owed him a hundred pence 100 denarii by some reckoning he's about 17 and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying pay me that thou lois his fellow servant fell down his feet and beside him saying have patience with me and i will pay the all and he would not but he went out and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt he's just been forgiven something in the neighborhood of 12 million dollars and he's hassling this guy for 17 bucks have you ever met somebody like that don't raise your hands so when his fellow servants saw that he was done what he was done they were very sorry i can imagine and came and told their lord what was done kim told the lord all that was done then his lord after he had called him said unto him oh thou wicked servant i forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me should not thou also have had compassion on my fellow servant even as i had pity on thee get the picture get the picture gang were in that guy's shoes were in that guy's shoes and his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors until he should pay all that was doing unto him so likewise shall my heavenly father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses boy what a sobering insight very often when i get upset about something i praise god the holy spirit will prick me on that and say wait a minute christ has forgiven me so much that doesn't give me license to be cavalier but boy it should give me license to be compassionate forgiveness it's a little summary forgiveness never remembers our sin i'll forgive you but i'll never forget that it's not forgiveness never remembers our sin hebrews 10 17 restorative forgiveness first john 1 9 that's the christian's bar of soap if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness what a precious verse that is and discipline is retained in second samuel 13. we should forgive others colossians 3 and also the lord's prayer there are degrees of punishment let's remember that and we'll make we want to use this as a springboard and you get a whole study of degrees of punishment let's just stipulate it and there's the verses if you want to track it down okay chronology titus was appointed in 1480 augustus died in august august 19 14 a.d so if if the ministry started in the during the 15th year of tiberius so that would be 14 something so it's 28 something that the chronology starts that we're using here in luke 3. so we believe we believe that the ministry began in the fall of 28.80 that makes the fourth pass over april 6 32 a.d and we'll deal with that in a couple of chapters from now all other chronologies that you probably will run into are bent around to assume a friday crucifixion we'll deal with that in a couple of verses but we started at nazareth we go down for the baptism that we went down there in in matthew 3 then the temptation of jesus christ in math matthew 4 and also luke 4. then we went up to salem and then to kana that's really in john's gospel where we have the the first uh miracle the wet the water and turn to wine and uh so we get to the spring of 29 a.d the first let's say the first miracle was in edcana and he moved to capernaum and uh there's a sojourn down in jerusalem where he purges the temple nicodemus's visit he carried and baptizes all the gospel of john picks up all this stuff but then that's psycho the woman on the well on the way back up and what have you jesus heals the son of the royal official in kana um john the baptist is imprisoned in jerusalem on mark 1 jesus begins his public ministry in the galilee that matthew picks up in chapter 4. and at nazareth of course we have his he announces his mandate for his ministry out of isaiah and he's driven out they tried to throw him off a cliff but he slips away he sets up his operational base in capernaum calls four disciples in matthew 4. peter had a draft of fish in luke chapter 5. they're going to recognize that on resurrection morning but that's another part of the story he peter heals his mother-in-law and so forth get to the summer of 30 a.d at capernaum healing of the paralytic matthew's call detailed in luke 5 and also matthew 9. uh here's the corn and the sabbath and all of that the man with the withered hand the fame begins to spread sermon on the mount matthew 5 6-7 and then we have the centurion servant healed he's the one that built the the the synagogue in capernaum by the way and around maine we have the widow's son raised from the dead that's about when we hear about john's query from prison he dies at simon's house returns home and that takes you to the autumn of 30 a.d back in capernaum the blind and dumb man healed accused in israel accused of baal zabob that's what closes the open ministry in a sense matthew 12. we have the seven kingdom parables then announced and interpreted only and private to the disciples in matthew 13. as we zero in on the lake we have the storm on the way to kadera we have the nike healed and the what we call the case of the devil ham and we all right and uh they head back and capernaum jairus's daughter is raised the women with the issue of blood both have a 12-year issue going on here two blind man the man dumb and best assessed all these we're about matthew 9 here then at nazareth the people take offense the apostles are sent out in pairs in matthew 10. this is where you encounter the execution of john the baptist and the return to capernaum spring of 31 a.d at capernaum return of the 12 he ties to betheade again he feeds 5 000 and returns to capernaum he walks on water there's also the sermon on the bread of life in john 6 eating with washed hands and all that business get confronted with then we get to the summer 31 a.d we're getting to the climax here it surprised me to discover that jesus took a summer cottage inside and gentile country mark 7. interesting he helped a candidate woman and then he goes to the region of decapolis that's where's the deaf and dumb man in mark 7. that's where the 4 000 are fed in matthew 15. and then we get back to magdala the pharisees demand a sign and bethsaida the eleven of the pharisees and herod he talks about all of that there and um we're now at the ottoman 31 a.d we're getting to getting to the climax here journey northwards to caesarea philippi we were just there a chapter ago and uh the transfiguration occurs uh different people have different views we're assuming here it's probably mount tabor and uh excuse me mount herman and many people assume it's mount tabor i don't think it was because it was inhabited at the time and i think it was about uh mount hermon but that's who knows and uh that's where we have a number of other miracles can turn until he gets back to capernaum then we have the tribute money question that occurred in the you know with the get a coin in the fish and so forth in matthew 17. and then we get into this whole discussion that kicked off tonight's session who is the greatest so that is a sort of a geographic summary of where we've been what's next is the judean ministry this was the galilean ministry that matthew emphasizes but from here on out we're going to be focusing primarily on the judean ministry which is going to lead up to the big deal the final week so your assignment for next time as we open up what i'll call unit 2 is read matthew 19 and 20 for next time and with that let's stand for closing word of prayer let's buy our hearts father we just thank you for every opportunity you give us to come together as your assembly we thank you father for your word we thank you for your presence we thank you for the holy spirit to illuminate that word to us and father we just stagger as we try to realize how far you've gone that we might live and grow and have fellowship with you father we just thank you for the precious word you've given us we would father that you would just increase our passion our appetite our hunger for your word now through your holy spirit you would help each of us to grow father we would pray that you'd help each one of us raise the bar on our walk with you help us father to take that next step whatever it might be whatever you would have it be we do pray father you just illuminate that path before us that we might more responsively be more a more effective steward of the opportunities you put before us that we might be effective for you and pleasing in your sight as we commit ourselves to take that next step and we make that commitment without any reservation whatsoever as you commit ourselves into your hands in the name of yeshua our lord and savior jesus christ amen [Music] you

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Published: Wed Aug 26 2020