Long later on their toes here, just to see if they're paying attention.
Keeps them from going to sleep during the sermon here.
I appreciate that, Tony. Just had a quick technical glitch there and had to restart PowerPoint here to get that going. Sorry for that brief bit of inconvenience. Wouldn't advance past the first slide, so this would have been a very, very short sermon here, about two minutes long. But we didn't come here for that.
By way of introduction, since we have several new people here, since we haven't had one of our Bible classes here on the Gospels for about two months now and have several new people here, I thought I'd explain a little bit about the format here for this. We're doing a series of sermons going through the Harmony of the Gospels, which I believe most of you have. This is a New King James version. It was the only one. There wasn't a commercially available version, so I created one here myself. I think everybody has one here. We've provided one free one per family here, and then allowed people to purchase one if other individuals would like one. I happen to have an extra one or two available here today if you need one of those. During this format, what we're doing is going through the Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ, line by line, word by word, through the Gospels. The Harmony of the Gospels, if you're not familiar with that, is a book that shows all of the different Gospel accounts side by side where you can read through and compare them, because each of the writers includes other details that the other writers leave out. So it's very helpful to get the whole story to go through and compare all of the accounts side by side. Some of the writers are more specific in their language and wording. For instance, Mark is quite general. It's the shortest Gospel. Matthew tends to give more details than Mark does. Luke, with his wording, his mastery of the Greek language, tends to get a little more specific than Matthew does at times. Those are some of the differences. John's Gospel, of course, is very different from all of the others. John apparently wrote much, much later, near the end of the first century, several decades after the other Gospel writers. He presents a very different perspective on the Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ, which will be evident as we go through that. So we've been doing this for a better part of a year now. So far, we're up to page 10. So that tells you some idea of how detailed we're going through in this today. Well, actually, we're up to page 11 today, so we're doing better than I thought. On average, we probably cover about a page in here per study. So at 140-some pages, that'll give you some idea when we expect to get this finished, or when I'm finished before we get through it, one or the other. I'm not sure which will come first.
By way of quick review, it's been a couple of months since we did this with the feast. So so many work deadlines and so on I had to cover. But we'll make up for that a little bit with a class today and then another one next week. Normally, we do this on the first and third Sabbath of the month and then have combined services on the second Sabbath of the month. And then on the fourth Sabbath, I go up and give two classes up in Loveland. So that gives you some idea of the way this is structured. And it is set up, even with our physical setup here, we do it more in a classroom style presentation here, which means if you have questions, I'm approaching this as though it were a college level class. So if you have questions about it, feel free to raise your hand. Also, if you have particular observations you'd like to make on it, something's unclear, you'd like to add something on it, feel free to raise your hand and we'll allow room and space for that as well. So by way of quick review here, in our last classes, we talked about the work of John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer, as I prefer to call him, because that's more what the Greek means. John the Immerser, John the Dipper. There's somebody who immersed people in water. We talked about the baptism of Jesus Christ, and then last time, last class, we talked about the temptation in the wilderness, which Mr. Hines referred to there in his sermon up there. So today, we'll pick up the story in John 1 and verse 19, and we'll be covering up through verse 34.
Some of you may be wondering, well, I don't remember us covering the first part of John in one of these classes here, and that's true. We actually did not, but I did in one of the earlier introductory sermons in this series cover the first part of John covering his pre-existence. If you go back through our sermon archives, you'll find that there not as a Bible study, but as a sermon. I would certainly recommend, if you missed that, to go back and review that, because it gives a great deal of material about Christ's pre-existence, the I AM, his use of that phrase that Mr. Hines mentioned, and so on. So today, we'll pick it up, continuing the story of John the Baptizer shortly after he has baptized Jesus. John was quite a remarkable figure. He was actually well known during that time and for years later. I'd like to start out here. This is a depiction of John dressed like Elijah. We'll talk about that a little bit later on here down in the Jordan River Valley. This gives you some idea of what the Jordan River Valley looked like here. I'd like to start with a quote from Josephus, the famous Jewish historian who wrote in the latter part of the first century AD. Josephus was a Jewish writer. He was from a priestly family, grew up in Jerusalem. He was born in 37 AD and lived to 100 AD.
During the latter part of his life, from 70 AD, he was captured or surrendered to the Romans in the Jewish rebellion there. He actually got into the good graces of the Roman emperors.
They actually supported him as he wrote his histories of the Jewish peoples. He wrote a number of exhaustive works, one of which is called The Antiquities of the Jews. This is a quote about John the Baptizer from that book here. Again, this reinforces the point that John was a real person and the Bible's description of him is accurate. This is from a historian at that time.
John, that was called a Baptist, was a good man and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both as to righteousness towards one another and piety toward God. So to come to baptism, for that the washing with water would be acceptable to him if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away of some sins only, but for the purification of the body, supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. It's kind of a long-winded way of saying that John emphasized righteousness and repentance to come to him, to be baptized as a symbol of that repentance and turning to God. And then later on in his quote he says, others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved by hearing his words. So again, this is the account of a secular historian of the time, lived sometime after John, but again this shows that John was a well enough figure before Josephus came along that he was very well known. And again, this confirms what we read about in the Gospels. That John was a very righteous man, a good man teaching righteousness, teaching baptism for the repentance of sins. And he was also a powerful and influential figure who drew large crowds, coming to hear him speak and to hear his message. And John, I might mention here, is one of a number of figures found in the Gospels who are recorded in Josephus' writings.
You know, a lot of people who are against the Bible say that, oh, the Gospels are just fiction. They were written about two centuries after these events supposedly took place, and it's all just made up history. Well, you can take that position if you want, but then how do you reconcile that with Josephus who records many of the individuals mentioned in the Gospels, including Jesus Christ, including Christ's half-brother James, and other figures there. So the onus is on them to try to prove their point that this is fiction when historical records clearly confirmed that these people did exist. So now we'll pick up the story in John 1 and beginning in verse 19.
Now this is the testimony of John the Baptizer when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? And one of the study questions I sent out last night was, who are these Jews that it's mentioned here who sent priests and Levites to Jerusalem to ask John who he was? And this is an important question because we find this phrase, the Jews, mentioned a number of times in John's Gospel. And you'd be surprised how many people take that as a condemnation of the Jews. The Jews are quite often spoken of in somewhat negative terms in John's Gospel like this. And this is given rise to a fair amount of anti-Semitism. But think about it. Who was John the Baptizer? He's a Jew. Who was Jesus Christ? He's a Jew also. Who was the writer of this Gospel of John? John. And who is he? He's a Jew. So we might ask ourselves a question. Is John lumping all Jews together when he sometimes refers to them negatively? No, of course not, because he'd be condemning himself and Jesus Christ and all of the other disciples and John the Baptizer himself by doing that. No. What this means is that this phrase generally is used as kind of a shorthand for the Jews who opposed Jesus. And this is primarily the Jerusalem religious establishment that we talked about several classes ago. And we'll talk about again in the next class or two when Jesus cleanses the temple here.
So what John is showing here by mentioning this very early on is that the opposition to Jesus Christ's mission and his ministry arose very early in his ministry. Actually, here from basically the day that Jesus is baptized, the religious authorities in Jerusalem are opposing him.
Although, as John and the other Gospel writers later record, there were many Jews who did believe in Jesus and came to accept him as Messiah, as we'll see later. So again, the Jews that are mentioned here are the Jerusalem religious establishment here. And this is evident, if you read this, by who it is they sin. Which, as we see here, is they sin priests and Levites.
Why is that? Well, because the religious establishment is the ones who are over the priests and the Levites, so they are under their authority. So those are the ones they send out to question John. And what is going on here is the religious establishment knows from all the rumors in the great vine that John is attracting large crowds. As we read about from Josephus, large crowds came out to hear his message. They're in the wilderness and they send people to go check it out. Because, after all, this could be a threat to their power and their position. This is one of the themes we see through the Gospels, time and time again, that they do not take kindly to Jesus Christ because they realize he's a threat to them. We'll talk more about that in a couple of classes from now. Continuing here in verse 20, John confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ or the Messiah. And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he answered, No. So they asked John about three things. Are you the Messiah? No. He was not the Messiah. Are you Elijah? No. He says he's not Elijah. Another study question I sent out is, Why Elijah? Why did they ask him about that? You know, that sounds like a kind of an off-the-wall question. But think about it, though.
How did Elijah die? Anybody? Sam? Yeah, he was taken up into a chariot, into the sky. And that's, well, not quite the end of the story, but that's, Elijah does, several years later, write a letter to one of the kings. But there's no record in the Bible of Elijah dying.
And one thought that some of the Jews that they believed is that Elijah never died. He was taken up into the sky and the fiery chariot and never died. So they were expecting him to, some of the Jews, not all of them, believed that he had been divinely kept alive for all these centuries and would be returning here. And even to this day, some of you may be familiar with this. When the Jews set out their tables for Passover, it's very common to leave a place for Elijah, in case Elijah shows up. They do that. You can ask about that. Do some research on it. And they do. They expect that Elijah is going to show up in Passover. It would be a logical time for him to show up. So they set a place setting there at the table for Elijah and leave it vacant during that time.
So another aspect of this also is found in Malachi 4 and verse 5. And this is a prophecy we're very familiar with. But Malachi says, and Malachi is writing a couple of centuries before this. The last book of the Hebrew Scriptures there. And Malachi says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
So the Jewish people of Christ day would also look at this prophecy and say, Well, Elijah is prophesied to come before the Messiah. So this is some of the factors why they're asking John if he is the Elijah. And also, as we talked about in previous sermons, how is John dressed?
John is dressed like Elijah. He's wearing a leather belt like Elijah. He's wearing a hairy garment like Elijah. He's carrying out his work in Elijah places. We'll talk about that more in just a few minutes here. So these are some of the reasons why they would have asked John, the baptizer, if he were the prophet Elijah. So let's see. One other... Yeah, okay. Also, then they asked John, Are you the prophet? Not, Are you a prophet? Because he clearly is a prophet, but are you the prophet? A specific prophet? And what's this referring to? We discussed this in an earlier class briefly, but just to touch on it again here, Deuteronomy 18 and verses 17 and 18.
This is Moses, again, kind of summing up the history of Israel before they cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land. One of the things that Moses writes here is, And the Eternal said to me, to Moses, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. So here was a prophecy of a prophet who would come, a prophet like Moses, another lawgiver, if you will, like Moses here, and people clearly expected and believed in this prophecy. We find this phrase referred to a number of times in the Gospels. People will say of Jesus, truly, he is the prophet because of the miracles that he would perform, this sort of thing.
It's rather ironic that they knew of these prophecies of this particular prophet who was to show up on the scene. Yet when Jesus did show up, the fulfillment of this, they did not recognize him for the most part. That is rather ironic. Clearly, we see from these questions that people were expecting the Messiah to show up at that time, they were expecting Elijah to show up at that time, they were expecting the prophet to show up at that time. But they did not recognize the fulfillment of these things. So going back to John 1 and verse 22 now, John 1 and verse 22, Then they said to John, Who are you? That we may give an answer to those who sin us. What do you say about yourself? And John said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Eternal, as the prophet Isaiah said. This, of course, is a quote from Isaiah 40 and verse 3, prophecy of John. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Eternal, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. We talked about that prophecy a couple of classes ago in considerable detail. What that meant there. You can go back and review that again if you haven't. Continuing on then in John 1 and verse 24, it says, Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees. Now we saw back up here in verse 19 that it was the priests and Levites who were sent. But this is not a contradiction because the Pharisees could actually come from all walks of life and stations in life and different occupations. Phariseeism was a movement within the greater practice of, for lack of a better term, Judaism at that day. The Pharisees were the more religiously strict conservative practitioners of the religion, as we see throughout the Gospels there. But we see also that some of the priests and Levites were also Pharisees. We'll get into this in more detail at some point. I would just caution us not to lump all of the Pharisees in together. We see some of Christ's disputes and arguments and conflicts with the Pharisees and tend to think they're all just a bunch of self-righteous, arrogant people. Well, that's not true. It depended in considerable amount on which rabbi the particular Pharisee followed because just as there are many different strains within what we'll call traditional Christianity today, there were different strains within Judaism.
Some were more conservative, more hardline, you might say, more strict. Some were more liberal, more progressive. The practices and, to some extent, beliefs among these different groups depended on which rabbi, which teacher they followed. Without that background, we tend to miss a lot of the conflicts of what is going on between Christ and the Pharisees and other religious groups. We'll again touch on that as we get to it at a logical place in our studies here.
My point here is that Pharisees could be found within all strata of society, including the priests and the Levites, as we see here. Of course, some Pharisees became followers of Jesus Christ in the early church. One of the most prominent we touched on in the introductions to these series was the Apostle Paul, who said, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, not I was a Pharisee. So Paul considered himself a Pharisee and a follower of Jesus Christ as a Messiah. That's why I say don't necessarily lump them all in together and label them as all opposing Jesus Christ, because that's not the case. Continuing with our story here, John 1 and verse 25, they ask him, saying then, Why do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? And John answered them, saying, I baptize with water, but there stands one among you whom you do not know.
It is he coming after me, it is he who, excuse me, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. Now the before me here that is mentioned, preferred before me, actually preferred is not there in the original. The translators seem to have inserted that to make sense of it. But what John is literally saying is, and about half of the Bible versions I check, say something like, who was before me? Not who was preferred before me, but just who was before me. And of course, since John is six months older than Jesus, on the physical level, John was before Jesus. So why does John say that he was before me? Well, he's referring to Jesus Christ's pre-existence. John knew that somehow. Perhaps most likely it had been divinely revealed to him that Jesus Christ actually pre-existed in divine form before he was born as a physical human baby in the flesh.
So any questions about what we've covered so far here? Because we're about to switch gears, get into another topic here. So if there are any questions, please raise your hand. We'll cover that. Okay, if not, we'll move on here. And then John concludes this particular section in verse 28 by saying, these things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan where John was baptizing.
So let's analyze this a little minute here for a couple of minutes here and think about bringing in some other aspects of the story here that are not spelled out here in the Gospels. We know that the Gospels are all summaries of the life of Jesus Christ, but there's an awful lot of detail that is not mentioned in there. So Bethabara in Hebrew comes from two words. That was one of the study questions I sent out last night, is what is the meaning of Bethabara. It comes from two Hebrew words, bet, which we've talked about before, as in bet lehem, house of bread. Beth lehem is where Jesus Christ was born. Jesus Christ is the bread of life. The manna from heaven, as Mr. Heinz mentioned there. Bet means place or house there. The temple, incidentally, was called the bet of God, the house of God, the place of God, where God was presumed to dwell. So bet, a bar, Bethamara is a combination of those two words, and it means place of crossing.
Place of crossing here. And this basically means that this was a place where you could cross over or pass through the Jordan River. It was a ford, in other words. Ford is probably not a term that a lot of us or our younger audience would be familiar with these days. A ford, actually quite common, before bridges came to be common here in the United States. You'd have a shallow place in a river, maybe up to your knees or waist, and that's where you would cross a river before there were ferries and bridges everywhere like we have today. So a ford means basically a place where the river was shallow enough that you could walk across it. You could ford that place.
Let's look at that location on a map. You can look at it on the back of your harmony as well. I'd recommend you turn there and fix it in your mind. I don't necessarily recommend you take notes on this because we'll cover that a whole lot. You'll end up with a lot of scribbles and not be able to see your map there over time because we'll be referring to that map quite often here. Let's take a look at this location here, Bethabara. You can see it highlighted up here. It's just a few miles north of the Dead Sea, that famous body. To orient us, here's Jerusalem over here. Here's the Jordan River Valley going through here with mountains on either side of it here. So Bethabara is down here just a few miles north of the Jordan River. This is where this takes place. This would have been the place of crossing here. It would have been the crossing place on the River Jordan because there was anciently a road that's indicated on your map that would have run down from Jerusalem to Jericho and then over and on up to what is today Amman, the capital of Jordan on the other side, and would have also another road that ran north and south alongside the Jordan River Valley there. So there was a crossing there. It was a major route, but they did not have a bridge there, at least not at this point in history. Later on in Roman rule there were two bridges, I think, across the Jordan River, including one of them in this area. But thinking in terms of this particular location, I sent this out as one of the study questions for you to think about last night, there were two things that took place, two prominent things in ancient times in this area. Actually, there were more than two, but there were two in particular that I'm thinking about. Can any of you remember some of the things that happened in ancient times in this particular area north of the Dead Sea? One of them we've already talked about here in the Sermon on Remes and on John the Baptizer, because this was an Elijah place here in this immediate area. It was an Elijah place. This, as we talked about in discussing the background to John the Baptizer, was where Elijah and Elisha crossed the Jordan River. And you can go back and read that account in 2 Kings 2. It talks about Elisha following Elijah to Bethel and then down to Jericho and then down to the banks of the Jordan River. And then what happens? If you remember the story, Elijah took off his cloak and struck the river with it and the waters parted. He and Elijah crossed the Jordan River at this location on dry ground. And then after that, the fiery chariot comes down and picks up Elijah and carries him off into the sky. It says into heaven, but heaven in this context is just the sky there. There weren't separate Greek words or Hebrew words, for that matter, to distinguish between the sky and heaven. The word just simply meant the expanse up above us here. So that is one of the things that took place there. Then Elijah dropped his mantle and Elisha picked it up and did the same thing in reverse. He goes back to the Jordan River, strikes it with the mantle and the waters part and he walks across on dry ground again.
There are two places, as we touched on in the Sermon on Rimes, where John is baptizing. Both of these are what I'd call Elijah places. One of them is right here at Bethabara and the other is up here, Salem or Aenon, up in that area. That is the area where Elijah was fed by ravens during the drought and the famine there in Israel. Those places, that place is indicated on your map there on the back as well. Bethabara is not indicated on there. So why is John baptizing at these two specific places when he's got about 65 miles of the Jordan River in which to baptize? Again, he picks out two specific places that are closely associated with events in the life of the prophet Elijah. So again, he's doing this to send the message like the way he was dressed, wearing the leather belt, wearing the hairy animal garment. He's sending the message that he is the second Elijah who is to come and prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. So again, this is a Rimes. A Rimes term we've talked about quite a bit here is a hint or clue or look back at something. There can be physical Rimes by one's actions, like we're seeing here with John, by what he's wearing, by the places that he's working. There are many other types. There are spoken Rimes. We find Jesus Christ using his technique a lot in his teaching. And there's written Rimes. We find all four of the Gospel writers using this technique to point us back to an earlier story in the Bible that we're supposed to draw lessons from. And if you're not familiar, as I've talked about before, with the Scriptures, there you miss a lot of the story that's going on. So I'll point these out as we go through them. It's just amazing as I learned about that concept. Now they just pop out through the Gospels all over the place. I've heard there are as many as 300 different examples of Rimes in the Gospels there. And we've covered probably 15 to 20 so far.
So again, this is a Rimes. So two things that took place in this area. One we talked about is this is an Elijah place. This is where Elijah and Elisha crossed the Jordan River and where Elijah is taken up into the sky in a fiery chariot. But there was something else even more prominent that took place in this immediate area. And what was that? Yes, Brian? Very good. Very good. Israel crossed the Jordan River before they attacked Jericho. You can get kind of a hint on here because what's the closest city to here? Jericho. So this is the area where the Israelites crossed the Jordan River. I think that's probably, can't prove it, but I think that's probably where Bethabara, Place of Crossing, got its name because it was the place of the Israelites crossing over the Jordan River to capture Jericho and then enter into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua here.
So there was that famous story, kind of getting ahead of myself in my slides here a little bit, so we'll catch up. So yeah, you remember the story? The Israelites crossed the Jordan in the springtime of the year, marched around Jericho for the seven days, and then God divinely toppled the mud brick walls of the city. Some of you, I know, have been to Jericho, and you can still see, if you know what you're looking for, some of the remains of the mud brick walls in that area. I was just able to do that Feast of Tabernacles a year ago and point some of that out to the people on the tour there. So yes, this is where that took place. There's an artist's conception of the Israelites and what happened is the priest. If you remember the story, they came up. Keep in mind, this is in the springtime of the year. The Jordan River is actually in flood stage at that time. God told them essentially to have faith and told the priest to go and step in the river. As soon as they did, then the waters parted and they were able to cross. But they were also told to go out and stand in the river while the Israelites crossed over it there.
Let's actually read about that here in Joshua 3 and verses 14 through 17. So it was when the people set out from their camp to cross over the Jordan. They'd been camped out on the east side of the Jordan River. Now they're going to cross over to the west side with the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant before the people. And as those who bore the Ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the Ark dipped in the edge of the water. For the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest. It's at flood stage, as I mentioned there. Continuing on. It came to pass that the waters which came down from upstream stood still and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zeratun. So the waters that went down into the sea of the Araba, the salt sea or the dead sea, it's referring to here, failed and were cut off. And the people crossed over opposite Jericho, saying they crossed the Jordan River near Jericho. And this location is only about four or five miles from Jericho. Then the priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Eternal stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel crossed over on dry ground until all the people had crossed completely over the Jordan. So this definitely had to be an act of faith on the part of the priests bearing the tabernacle, because they had to step in the water. I mean, you've got this river going by at flood stage, so God told them you've got to step in. And they did, and then the water's part. Then they had to go and stand there while all the Israelites crossed.
You can imagine what that would have felt like with all these waters piling up there, as shown in this illustration here. It had to be more than a little bit unnerving here. So again, that is probably why this place is called Bethabara, the place of crossing.
Here it was called Bethbara, Betbara, in the time of the Judges, several centuries later, after this crossing that we've talked about here. And this would have been more than a thousand years before the events that we read about here in John, that this place has had this name Bethabara, or Bethbara in Hebrew. So it's interesting, let's draw a few connections here.
So it's interesting that Jesus is baptized here, very near or at the spot where the Israelites were figuratively baptized in the Jordan River. Let's absorb that just a little bit here.
1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 and 2. Paul is talking about the experience of the Israelites. And he says, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, referring to the pillar of fire and cloud, all passed through the sea, this is referring to the Red Sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. So Paul here is drawing the analogy that the Israelites were figuratively baptized when they crossed through on dry ground, when God parted the waters for them to cross the Red Sea there. But think about that, because what happened to that generation who was baptized figuratively crossing the Red Sea? They all died.
They all died out in the wilderness for their lack of faith, for their rebellion, their rejection of God. So actually, this generation that we're talking about here was the second generation. These were the children of those who all died out. They were the ones who had the faith to enter into the Promised Land. So Paul uses the analogy of the first generation being baptized in the Red Sea, and then God duplicates that miracle with the Jordan River for the next generation coming on.
Let's draw a couple of parallels here. What's happening? The Israelites are crossing over to the Promised Land. And they're baptized, figuratively speaking, in the Jordan River before doing that. What about us? We're crossing into our Promised Land as well. And the way we do that is through baptism, through the receipt of God's Holy Spirit. So find it rather interesting that Jesus Christ is baptized here near the spot where these Israelites, the second generation, are figuratively baptized before they cross over into their Promised Land. A lot of different connections you can draw there if you understand the geography and the history of that. So that's one reason why I'll be bringing out a lot of times different historical lessons, parallels, drawing lessons from the Old Testament here. Because if you don't understand the history, if you don't understand the geography of where these things took place, and that's why I included several maps in the Harmony, you miss a lot of these connections that are taking place here.
There's something else here that happened that is a bit more subtle than this, not something you'd necessarily come to mind here. But again, back to our map, the Israelites camped out here before they crossed over here on the east side of the Jordan. There's a plane there that's about 10 or 12 miles wide, would have been a good place to camp out there, alongside the Jordan. So the Israelites are camped out on that side of the Jordan before crossing over into the Promised Land.
And we read about that in Deuteronomy. Now notice something from that book of Deuteronomy that happens near the end. And again, Deuteronomy is summing up the history of the Israelites. They're 40 years there. And Moses is giving them the final instruction as part of the preparations before they cross over the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. So let's notice something here, Deuteronomy 31, verses 24 through 26. So it was when Moses had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were finished, when he had finished writing the words of this law in a book, that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Eternal, saying, Take this book of the law and put it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Eternal your God, that it may be there as a witness against you. So what this is saying is that Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy while the Israelites were camped out there on the east side of the Jordan before they crossed it, before this miracle of parting the waters of the Jordan, and they crossed over there. This is one of the last acts of Moses, writing the last book of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy here.
He wrote it and completed it here across the Jordan River shortly before he died, because he wasn't allowed to enter the Promised Land, as we know.
In the last class, we talked about the temptation of Jesus Christ there in the wilderness, which took place right after he is baptized and took place in this immediate vicinity that we're talking about here. Not necessarily down right by the Jordan, but certainly within probably 5, 10, 15 miles of here. Now, we remember that from the story that Jesus is tempted three times by Satan the devil. And all three times he responds with a quote from the Bible. From one book. What book? Deuteronomy. Think about that connection here for a minute. He quotes all three times from Deuteronomy, the book that Jesus himself as the God of the Old Testament had inspired Moses to write right across on the other side of the Jordan River.
Isn't that cool? Think about that connection there. Just think about that. And that's, again, another connection if you understand and look at them out. I'd recommend whenever you study the Bible, get yourself a good Bible Atlas and read and mentally place in your mind where these different events take place because there are all kinds of connections like that if we read and understand that. So, yeah, here is Jesus being tempted right after he's baptized where the Israelites cross the Jordan River. And he responds to Satan's temptation by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy that Moses had finished just before they cross over the Jordan River.
A book that Jesus himself had inspired Moses to write. It's just mind-boggling to see these kind of connections there. Just amazing stuff. But there's yet another connection that I'd like to draw on here fairly quickly here before we move on. And if you remember the story, Moses is not allowed to cross over into the Promised Land there to lead the Israelites over there. So what happens? If you remember the story, Moses and Aaron, an individual, is chosen to be the successor of Moses as the leader of the Israelites into the Promised Land.
Who is that? It's an individual by the name of Joshua. And we read about that in Deuteronomy 31 verse 23. Then he, God, God is the one who chose him, inaugurated Joshua the son of none, and said, Be strong and of good courage, for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land of which I swore to them, and I will be with you. So Joshua is chosen to lead the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. Joshua is. What's Jesus's name in Hebrew?
Yeshua or Joshua. So what we have is who leads us into the Promised Land of God's Kingdom.
Joshua. Yeshua. Just as Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River as a type of baptism into the Promised Land, who leads us into the Promised Land? Joshua. Yeshua. Jesus Christ, as we would call it here. So again, this is one of those connections here. It's not spelled out in the Gospels, but if you understand the history and understand the geography, you begin to see these connections that God has placed in there for us to discover. Yes, Pat? Yeshua means salvation. Salvation. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yah, Shua. God saves. God's salvation. There doesn't translate well into English grammar, but yes, that's what it means.
Salvation. So Joshua was essentially the Savior of the ancient Israelites as a type of Jesus. Yeshua being our Savior today, bringing us into the Promised Land and giving us salvation here. So again, this is why we need to be studying all of the Bible, all of the scriptures to be able to make these different connections here as we go through it. So just to give you a little bit of an idea of what this looks like today. Quite different. This is the Jordan River as it looks today, about two-thirds of the width of this room. It's not a very impressive site at all. It's no bigger than any of our large creeks that we would find around here.
I would not recommend wading into it because it's mostly agricultural runoff. It's from watering the fields. It's laden with chemicals and fertilizer and to be blunt, a certain amount of raw sewage that gets dumped into there. So it's just a shadow of its former self. Also, a lot of the water is diverted away by both Israel and Jordan upstream there because it's a very arid climate and they need the water for drinking.
It drains down from the Sea of Galilee straight down, about 65 miles down the Jordan Valley into the Dead Sea. So it's basically dried up by the time it enters the Dead Sea. That's one of the main reasons the Dead Sea is shrinking. The water level is dropping about two or three feet per year in the Dead Sea there. So that's another another whole issue. I don't want to leave you with this view of the Jordan River. I will leave you with one that's a little more appealing.
This is a photograph it was taken about a hundred years ago. You might just compare those two there. This thing is about two-thirds of the width of this room with this river here. You can see people actually fording the river there, carrying their burdens on their shoulders there. The water is up to about their knees. This was a shallow place there where the river is fairly wide and the water spread out.
You could afford it there before there was a bridge in that area. This gives you some idea of the width that it would have been. This is obviously not at flood stage either because at flood stage you can see these high banks up here with nothing growing on them back before so much water was diverted. The water level would have been up here probably 10 or 12 feet deeper than it is even in this photo here, which obviously would have been impossible for people to cross on dry land without God divinely parting the waters there. As we read about back there in Jordan, or in the book of Judges.
Now back to John. Let's pick up the story now that we've had that little historical and geography lesson here. We'll pick up the story the next day. The next day John the baptizer saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is an unusual remes, again a hint or clue, in that it looks both backwards and forwards in time.
It looks backwards in time, of course, to the Passover lambs and all of the other lambs that had been sacrificed, offered up over the previous 14 to 15 centuries. But it also looks forward to the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. It would come in three and a half years.
I won't spend a lot of time on this because we normally talk about this leading up to Passover, but we should notice a few familiar scriptures that relate to this.
1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7. Paul's instruction to the Corinthian church, Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.
Indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
So here he points out that Christ was the fulfillment of those millions of lambs that had been sacrificed in the Passover over the centuries leading up to this.
Another familiar passage, 1 Peter 1 and verses 18 and 19.
Breaking into the thought, Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot.
Peter here tells us that the price that was paid to redeem us or to buy us back from our sinful behavior so we could be reconciled to God was the blood of Jesus Christ, who, again, like the lambs that have been sacrificed over the centuries, had to be perfect and without blemish, as indeed Jesus Christ was. And the last one we'll look at, prophecy from Isaiah 53, verses 6 and 7. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Eternal has laid on him the iniquity of us all, bearing our sins, in other words, as Jesus would do. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. And, of course, this is a prophecy of how Jesus Christ went to his execution, not arguing, not demanding to be set free, not proclaiming that he's innocent, not contesting the trumped-up charges against him, not condemning those who were going to kill him, but instead praying to God to forgive them, because they did not know what they were doing.
So, this tells us these are some of the many, many passages drawing to parallels between Jesus Christ and the Passover lamb offered for our sins. So, continuing back here in John 1 and verse 30.
And here John says, This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me. And, again, the word preferred is added in there to try to make it more sense by translators who didn't understand Christ's pre-existence. Verse 31, I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water. And John bore witness, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he or it, as it should be, remained upon him. Actually, he or it aren't even there. The literal Greek says something like, I saw the Spirit descend from the sky like a dove and remained on him. It doesn't say he remained on him or it remained on him. Doesn't say either there. And, again, the translators inserted that because of their belief in the Holy Spirit as a person there. You can compare this back to, as we talked about, well, let's see, where's it? Page 10. Yeah, page 10 under Jesus's baptism there. This is John's account of that as well. We talked a lot about that last time, so we won't review that.
But if you missed that message, I'd highly recommend you go back and do that because there are many, many examples of remes in those words there. And if you missed that, there's a lot of quite profound material in there that you miss a great deal of the story if you haven't heard that. So I would highly recommend you do that. Continuing on, John says, whoops, actually got ahead of myself. Yeah, verse 32, and John bore witness, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained upon him.
Let's see. Now, yeah, one other point I wanted to insert. Let's see. I want to cover that right now.
Yeah, I'll get to that in just a minute here. Verse 33, I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And we talked about those different kinds of baptisms last time, baptism with water, baptism with fire, and baptism with the Holy Spirit. And basically, that was a big difference between the baptisms of John and of Jesus, that John baptized with water, but Jesus's followers would be empowered to convey the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands after baptism. And we see also here what John means, when he said, I did not know him. He actually explains it himself here. What he seems to be saying here is that he did not really understand or comprehend that Jesus was the Messiah until God divinely revealed this to him when Jesus came to be baptized by him. And I would also assume from this, the way this is worded, that John and Jesus, even though they are cousins, we don't know what relation of cousins, but apparently they had not seen each other for a long time, possibly not since they were children. Because I would assume, if they were both adults and knew each other, that somehow Jesus would have conveyed who and what he was to John. And I think that's otherwise I just don't see John saying this. I did not know him. I did not realize that Jesus was the Messiah. I think that's the inference we can make from this. You can't prove it one way or the other, but I think that's the most logical understanding and explanation for why John words this the way that he does here. And then in conclusion, John says, and I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. And I'd like to back up a little bit to several months ago when we talked about Joseph and Mary bringing Jesus to the temple there in Jerusalem, presenting him there. There were two individuals who were there who proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah.
And if you remember the story, the two individuals were quite elderly, Simeon and Anna. And God had revealed to both of them that they would not die before they had seen the Messiah. So God provided two witnesses there to testify when Christ is at eight days is brought to the temple that this is the Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel, as he's called there. So again, how many witnesses were required under God's law to establish a fact, a legal fact? Well, we know the answer. Deuteronomy 19 verse 15, by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established. And we talked about back there when Jesus is presented at the temple. There are two witnesses that God provides that testify that this eight-day-old infant is the Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel. So now what do we have in this story? We see John saying, John 1 and verse 34, and I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. So here is a witness that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. Now, if you back up again to page 10 that we talked about last time, we won't necessarily turn there, but Matthew 3 verse 17, Mark 1, 12, and 13, and Luke 3, 22, we have God the Father when Jesus is baptized saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So what do we have here? We have John testifying that Jesus is the Son of God, and we have God the Father Himself testifying that Jesus is the Son of God. So again, we have two witnesses. Same pattern that we saw back when Jesus is presented at the temple. Two witnesses to proclaim that He is the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Savior of Israel. And now we have two witnesses, John the Baptizer and God the Father, both testifying that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. So this is a good stopping point for this part of the story flow. So we'll move out of the harmony now. I want to spend our remaining time here a few minutes covering a related topic that ties in very much with this, with the events that we've read about, and events that will come up again and again as we go through the Gospels. And that is the expectation of the people at that time that a Messiah was soon to appear. There are many, many prophecies of the Messiah, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 prophecies in the Old Testament scriptures. They tell us a lot about His actions, about what He would do, about where He would live, about who He would be a descendant of, and even where He would be born. But there is one prophecy in particular that tells us the exact year in which He would arrive on the scene. One particular prophecy. We'll spend the rest of our time today going through that prophecy because it is quite profound. And we find it back in Daniel 9, and we'll cover verses 2 and 3, and 20 through 25.
So let's just read the first part of this. Daniel is approximately a little more than 500 years BC when he's writing this. And he says, in the first year of his, referring to Darius, the son of a Hasreas, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of years of the years specified by the word of the Eternal through Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
And this is a prophecy of Jeremiah 25 verses 8 through 13, which we'll read in just a moment here.
Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. So let's take a look now at this prophecy. Jeremiah 25 verses 8 through 13. We'll read through this fairly quickly here.
This again is Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in the last years of the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah when they were being threatened by the Babylonians. And he says, Therefore thus says the Eternal of Hosts, because you have not heard my words, disobeyed me, rejected me in other words. Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, says the Eternal, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, his tool, in other words, and will bring them against this land of Judah, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. And verse 10, Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
So this is what Daniel is referring to, that he knew that Judah would be in captivity in Babylon for seventy years. And continuing on, verse 12, Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Eternal, and I will make it a perpetual desolation. So Babylon is used as a tool by God to punish the kingdom of Judah, but yet Babylon itself will be punished, in turn, for their own cruelty here.
And verse 13, So I will bring on that land of Babylon all my words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations. So Jeremiah, under God's inspiration, wrote that Judah would fall to the Babylonians and would be exiled there for seventy years. And indeed, this is exactly what happened. So how was this fulfilled then? There were several different Babylonian waves of invasions against Judah, but the most devastating was most scholars date it to 586 to 585 BC.
And that is when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, they took the city, destroyed the temple, broke down its walls, left it desolate and abandoned, and then exiled all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah that they took into captivity over to other lands within the Babylonian Empire. Now the Babylonian Empire then, several decades later, fell to the Medo-Persian Empire. And under Cyrus the Great, they allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city and the temple under Zerubbabel. And that's the theme of the two books of Ezra and Nehemiah there in the Old Testament. So to make a long story short here, to kind of summarize this, the temple that was rebuilt by Zerubbabel there in Jerusalem, as near as we can tell, it was rededicated in about 515 BC. And this seventy years that Jeremiah is prophesying about and that Daniel refers to in his prophecy, would have begun in 585 BC with the destruction of Jerusalem and they're taken away into captivity and would have concluded in 515 BC with the red dedication of the temple after it had been rebuilt. Some scholars will quibble over the dates, but basically it would be between 587 to 585 BC and then would have ended in 517 to 515 BC there. So with that background, again I hit this pretty quickly, but I do need to wrap this up here. So with that background, going back to Daniel 2, and now we'll pick it up in verse 20. And Daniel says, Now while I was speaking, praying, and confessing my sin, and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the eternal my God, for the holy mountain of my God, yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, or the angel Gabriel here, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering or evening sacrifice. And he informed me and talked with me and said, Oh Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand.
Verse 23, At the beginning of your supplications, the command went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly beloved. Therefore, consider the matter and understand the vision.
Seventy weeks, and in Hebrew the word is literally sevens, it says seventy-sevens, are determined for your people and for your holy city, Jerusalem, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
Now the time setting, what we're reading here, is in the middle of this seventy-year period. Daniel is one of the captives taken over to Babylon by the Babylonians there.
So during this seventy-year period is when Daniel is writing this, and this angel reveals this message to him here. Continuing on in verse 25, now we come to the key part of this prophecy.
Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there shall be seven weeks, or seven sevens, and sixty-two weeks, or sixty-two sevens. The street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublesome times.
So this is the message that the angel Gabriel gives to Daniel during this interim period of the seventy years of captivity. Now I might point out this prophecy makes no sense if you're talking about literal weeks here, because this would be basically you add these up, sixty-nine, seventy weeks, it's a little over a year. So this means the Messiah would appear a little over a year from when Daniel is writing this, and that just historically did not happen. We know that, and Daniel in fact lived on beyond that period and later died. So it doesn't make sense if this would be fulfilled in literal weeks, just a little more than a year from when this was given to Daniel. That's why I point out that the Hebrew doesn't say weeks, it says sevens here instead. Now in Bible prophecy there's something we've probably heard of before called the day for a year principle. And what that means is that when prophecy speaks of a day and its fulfillment, it's actually talking about a year, a year for a day. And we find this in several places. We'll look at two of them fairly quickly here. One is Numbers 14 and verse 34. This is talking about the Israelites who refused to cross over into the Promised Land after becoming fearful on hearing the report of the scouts here. Notice what God then says to the Israelites because they lack the faith to carry out His instructions. He says, According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know my rejection. So to summarize what God is seeing here is the scouts went in, scattered the land for forty days, came back and gave their report. Most of the scouts didn't believe, all except Joshua and Caleb. They told the Israelites, and the Israelites refused to have the faith to go in, as God had told them to. So what God says is, OK, for one year for each of those forty days you're going to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all of you die out, and it's your children who I will then bring into the Promised Land, as we talked about, crossing the Jordan River, and so on. So here is forty days that God extrapolates out to forty years of their punishment of wandering in the wilderness when that generation would all die. We find another example over in Ezekiel 4 and verses 5 and 6. This one is a little more complicated, but it brings out the same principle, breaking into a fairly long thought here, where God is telling Ezekiel to essentially act out the punishment that he's bringing on the kingdoms of Israel and Judah for their sins and their rebellion against him. Just to pick up in part of the story God says to Ezekiel, for I have laid on you the years of their iniquity according to the number of the days, 390 days, so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side, and then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah, forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year. So essentially he tells Ezekiel to lie on one side, and that's going to symbolize what's going to happen to the kingdom of Israel. And then he's told to go and lay on his other side, and that's going to symbolize the punishment that he's going to bring on Judah. And he says, I'm going to do it a day for a year here, as he says. So when it comes to the prophetic fulfillment of time, we typically see this fulfilled.
When the Bible talks about a certain number of days, it's actually talking about that number of years in prophetic fulfillment here. So with that in mind, let's go back to Daniel 9 and verse 25 again here and see what is being said. So again, he says, Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven sevens, or seven times seven, and sixty-two weeks, or sevens, sixty-two times seven, the streets shall be built again, referring to the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem, and the wall, the wall around the city of Jerusalem, even in troublesome times.
As again we read about in Ezra and Nehemiah, we won't go there. So what's this talking about then numerically? Well, we see seven sevens equals 49, sixty-two sevens equals 434. So you add 49 and 434, and you get a total of 483. So what this is saying is there will be 483 years here. Now, so what is this time period? Well, again, Gabriel defines it for us here as he says, know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command, or decree, to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. So this is the beginning point. There would be a decree that would allow the Jews to go back and rebuild Jerusalem, rebuild the temple. So that's the starting point. And what is the ending point? Until Messiah the Prince.
So there's 483 years between this decree and the arrival of Messiah the Prince here.
So this period that the beginning point here we actually find mentioned in the Bible. There's several different decrees, but this is the one that we'll focus in on here. And it's recorded for us in Ezra 7 and verse 6. It says, Ezra came up from Babylon. This is the Ezra that talked about here in the book of Ezra. Ezra came up from Babylon, came up to Jerusalem. The king of Babylon granted him all his request according to the hand of the Eternal is God upon him. Some of the children of Israel, this is referring to the exiled Jews there in Babylon.
Now Babylon, in the meantime, now has been taken over, conquered by the Medes and the Persians. So now there's a new king in town who gives Ezra permission to return to Jerusalem, as it says here.
And with Ezra, some of the children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the Nethanim, which as near as we can tell probably means the workers or servants in the temple who took care of the physical functioning of the temple, came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. So this is the beginning point of this particular prophecy, and this is 457 BC, which this can be dated to. This decree from Artaxerxes, the Medo-Persian king. This is Artaxerxes the first, and his decree to Ezra allowing him to return.
So again, this is 457 BC, the starting point. Now if you add, you can do this on your calculator, you add 483 to minus 457, which is before BC then, you add those together and you come out with AD 26. And you might be thinking, AD 26? I thought I've heard it's AD 27? Well, you're right, because there is no year zero if you just do a straight mathematical equation. The mathematics would add a zero in there, but in chronology there was no year zero. It went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD. So you have to factor that in, and when you do that, because there is no year zero, you come to AD 27. And that is exactly why we have taught and understood for so many years that Jesus Christ begins his ministry here in AD 27. So this is an exact prophecy from the going forth of this decree in 457 BC. Daniel prophesied this more than 500 years earlier. He foretold the exact year in which the Messiah would appear. Now what about... we won't flip back there, but it mentioned the 49 years and the 434 years. It's broken down into two periods. What's that referring to? Well, actually, let's go ahead and take a look at that. Here I did have a slide in here for that. So there will be seven weeks, seven sevens, and 62 sevens. So the 49 apparently refers to the period of the rebuilding of Jerusalem during that time. As we see here from the way this prophecy ends, the streets shall be built again. In other words, the streets are going to be cleared of their rubble and repaved and all of that. And the city walls, which had been broken down by the Babylonians when they conquered Jerusalem, would be rebuilt even in troublesome times. So that's apparently why this is broken down into two segments. The 49 years refers to the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. And it did take that long from Ezra's arrival there in Jerusalem until all of this is finished. And then there's the 434 years until 27 A.D. when Jesus Christ appears on the scene. So what we have here is an absolutely amazing prophecy, given more than five centuries early, that foretells the exact year of the appearance of the Messiah. Obviously, no mere human being could have foretold that with that kind of accuracy.
As we'll see as we continue on through the Gospels, this is one of just dozens of prophecies that we'll see fulfilled in the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ, proving time and time again that God is faithful and true, and that Jesus is indeed, as God the Father testified and as John testified, that he truly is the Son of God. So we'll wrap it up there for today. Any questions? Yes, Pat? Okay, in John 1.33 John said, I did not know him. The cousins did not recognize his cousin. Well, when you go through the Gospels, you never hear of Jesus from the time he at the temple at 12 years old until he's 30. So where was he? He obviously could not have been in the area. He could have been anywhere in the entire world, really. Could have been, but you...
And I know there's a number of people who theorize that. I personally don't think so because let's see, where was it? In one of our earlier lessons, we pointed out that that is the last time that Jesus' father Joseph is mentioned. So apparently... well, yeah, actually it's at the temple, if I remember correctly, when they present him at the temple. That is the last mention of Joseph in Scripture. Yes, Faye?
We'll get into this in more detail when we reach it in Scripture, in the Gospels, in context. I do want to address that point, but just to give you a quick overview.
It's commonly understood, since Joseph is nowhere mentioned, that he has most likely died.
And shortly, sometime probably, my guess is when Jesus is in his teens, early 20s.
And Jesus, we know, has four brothers and at least three sisters. He, being the first born, would have become the patriarch of the household. He would have naturally come in and taken over Joseph's construction business, you might say. Would it have been logical? To my mind, it does not make sense that he would have essentially abandoned his responsibilities. Because he and his entire family have gone somewhere.
I don't think so, because later on, when we get into the Gospels, we find that people know Jesus' family. He's teaching in Galilee, he's teaching in Nazareth, and they say, is this not Joseph's son? Is he not the son of the carpenter and his father and his mother and his brothers? Are they not here with us? So the family was known in the area of Nazareth and Galilee, so that tells me that, yes, they were staying in that area. That would not be the case, had they gone out and moved and traveled around during that period. Again, all of it's an argument from silence, from supposition, but reading the comments that are made, I think that is the most logical explanation for it there myself. But again, we'll go into that in more detail when we reach that two or three years from now. Whatever we get to that point. Any other questions? Yes, Sam? Good question. I think what's going on there is John knows he's not Elijah, the one and only Elijah who lived eight, nine hundred years before that. So I think that, even though John is clearly conveying the message that he is the one who is to come to prepare the way for the coming of Messiah, he's not going to go out and claim that he is the literal Elijah. Yes, he's a figure of Elijah. Yes, he's the Elijah to come. But he is not. I take it that he's answering their question very literally, that I am not literally the Elijah. They are the one and only Elijah, the prophet. But he's clearly, by his actions, conveying the message that, yes, he is the Elijah to come.
So, yeah, good questions and comments. Okay, we'll wrap it up there then and close services with another hymn. And again, we'll be continuing this next Sabbath as well because we're a little off schedule here.
