Jesus Turns Water to Wine, Cleanses the Temple

Good morning to all of you here. It's nice to see a little better weather than what we had last Sabbath when we had to cut our social short because of the snow, blizzard moving in. But good to see all of you here on this very beautiful day. We do have quite a bit of material to cover here today, so I'll try to go through this fairly quickly. Guys, we have several guests. Welcome to you. Good to have you with us here today. I thought I'd give a little bit of a introductory background because this is probably a little more unusual setup than you're used to in the United Church of God services. About a year ago, or earlier this year, we started doing a series of classes on the Gospels, and that's what we'll be continuing today. We've been doing this about 20, roughly 20 sessions so far, usually on the first and third Sabbath of the month.

Early on, we experimented with what would be the most effective setup for that and settled on using more or less a classroom setup like this because I'm presenting a material more or less like a college level class on the Gospels. So we took a poll among the congregation. People seem to prefer this type of setup with the tables there for writing and taking notes. So that's why we have that particular setup and why we'll be doing the format the way that we are today.

So like I say, we've been doing this for approximately 20 classes so far, and we're up to second chapter of John. So this tells you how far we're making on this.

Also prepared this Harmony of the Gospels, and we're covering at this rate about a half a page, a class, so we're up to page 12 and 13 today for our material. So that's what we'll be covering today. So let's go ahead and get started in this as well. Trying to give a lot of the cultural background in this because I think if you talk to our visitors, talk to some of the members around here, you'll see that there's just an awful lot about that culture. We're 2,000 years removed chronologically from that time, or on the other side of the world. We're in a very different society and culture today, and there's just an awful lot of cultural background when we understand it that brings out a lot of insight in the Gospels that we just frankly do not know and have missed before.

We're getting a lot of the material. Just for knowledge, it's probably 20 to 25 major sources of material. What has happened is within the last couple of decades, a lot of American scholars, English scholars, have been interacting with Jewish scholars, Hebrew scholars, in Israel and studying a lot of the Jewish literature, writings of the time around the time of the first century.

They're finding all kinds of insights there, understanding customs practices that shed a lot of light on the Gospels. I'm trying to bring out a lot of that in ways that is relevant to us today. So that's kind of the thinking behind what we're covering in our presentation here. Of course, the whole goal of it, as I talked about in the last class, was if we were to become the disciples of Jesus Christ. A disciple is somebody who is not just a student. We translate it that way, but it's much more than that because a student just wants to know what the teacher knows. A disciple wants to be what the teacher is. If we are disciples of Jesus Christ, what are we trying to do? We are trying to become like him in every way. That's why we're going into so much background with that goal in mind, to become more like Jesus Christ in every way.

So today we will continue with our study of the Gospels. Just to catch us up to speed, in recent classes we've talked about the mission of John the Baptizer, otherwise known as John the Baptist. I don't care for that term because it's a religious denomination these days, but John the Baptizer was more his role. We talked about Jesus being baptized. We talked about the temptation in the wilderness. And then last time we talked about Jesus calling his first disciples.

We're now up to John chapter 2, going through the Bible chronologically. That's where we'll begin the story today with Jesus Christ's first miracle. Beginning in John 2 and verse 1, and I'll be projecting the scriptures up here on screen, but also feel free, please do write them all down.

On the third day, there was a wedding in Kanaah of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, Mary. The third day that this is referring to is from the last day mentioned. What John is doing here in chapter 1 and 2 is he's covering, if you look at it closely, the first week of the ministry of Christ's life. He starts off by saying, on this day this happened, and the next day this happened, and the next day this happened, and now he's up to the third day from the last events.

And he does that because what's happening is there's about a two-day walk from the previous events we talked about, which took place in the southern Jordan Valley, not far from the Dead Sea.

It's about a two-day walk up to Kanaah from Bet-Sayedah, where we left off the story last time.

And nothing is recorded about those two days. So they're walking. There's nothing to report in John's Gospel. So he says, on the third day from the previous location, and also one of the previous days is apparently a weekly Sabbath that's in there, too. So there's nothing significant that John records about that. So the Kanaah that is mentioned here... Actually, let me forget to grab my pointer. Let me do that. So to orient us on a map, here's the Jordan River Valley, the Sea of Galilee. Here's Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. Here is Kanaah, up here, a few miles north of Nazareth. And this is also the map about the third page from the back of the Harmony of the Gospels there. Or you can look at it on the back of the Harmony as well. So this is where we're talking about here, Kanaah. A hilly area. Galilee is quite hilly. I'll show you some aerial footage sometime in a coming class. I'll give you an idea of the lay of the land there to see what it looks like and help us better visualize these events. So the Kanaah that is mentioned here is likely Kerbet Kanaah, several miles north of Nazareth. It's called Kanaah of Galilee here because there's more than one Kanaah there in that area. So John is distinguishing that. So back to verse 2.

It says, Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. His disciples here is not all twelve. He has not called all twelve yet. It's just the five that we talked about last time at this point. So they were invited to this wedding in Kanaah in verse 3. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine. So to understand that, we need to understand a little bit about the background of weddings at that time. Wedding celebrations at that time were the big social occasion of the year. They typically lasted about a week. It goes to some pretty long ones. It may seem like it's a week, but it's not. But yeah, they literally lasted for about a week. People would literally come and go during that week-long celebration.

They were generally done in small villages. Most of the villages were 200 to 400 people. Something like that. Kanaah is about that size, as best we can tell. So it was a big community celebration where basically the whole community is invited. The whole town is invited there.

And if you did not provide enough food and drink to keep everybody happy during that week-long celebration, it was considered a huge social disgrace in that society, in that culture there.

Dave Hale, in his message last week, made reference to the parable of the king having a wedding feast for his son. They kill the fatted calf and animals and invite all kinds of people. That kind of gives you some of the flavor of what is going on here. So Mary, at this point as we see, picks up on the fact, and women being quite intuitive, pick up on these things a lot faster than men, generally. And she noticed that they had run out of wine there. And she realizes that there's a social disaster in the making here. Because it's partway through this week-long celebration, they've run out of wine. And what's going to happen now? This family is going to be embarrassed and disgraced because of this. Because they haven't fulfilled their social commitment here to the community. So she tells Jesus, as it says here, they have no wine. They've run out of wine. And verse 4, Jesus said to her, and this sounds rather rude in the Greek, but I'll explain this here, Jesus said to her, What does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.

Again, that sounds very rude, but it's actually a Hebrew idiom that is translated into Greek, and it does not translate well. We've talked about some of the language difficulties in previous classes here. The literal wording in the Hebrew is, What to me and you?

Which doesn't make sense in English, but it has the connotation of, Why do you involve me? Or your concern is not my concern. That would be the gist of what this means in Hebrew, and it doesn't translate well at all into Greek or even English, for that matter.

Also, Woman, it says that literally in Greek, and it sounds rude and off-putting to us, but in Greek, it's not that way. It's actually a term of respect and affection. Some translations translate this as, Mother, what does that have to do with me? To try to capture the respect and affection that is shown in there that doesn't translate well into the Greek and English there.

So that's essentially what's going on. As we'll see, Jesus does explain his response in his next phrase. He says, My hour has not yet come. What that means, again, for the setting, this is the first week of Christ's ministry. As we'll see later, a number of times in the Gospel, sometimes Jesus is very careful at times to whom and under what circumstances he reveals who and what he is.

And to this point, he has not done so. You get the connotation that he is held back on that. It's not his time to come out and really proclaim himself as the Messiah. He isn't as open at this point in his ministry very early on as he will be considerably later. His mother, as we see, does not take his response as rude because notice what she does next. Verse 5, His mother said to the servants, Whatever he says, you do it. She knows that Jesus is going to respond to her observation there that they run out of wine. She doesn't know what he's going to do, but she does know that he's going to take care of it, in other words.

Verse 6, There were set six waterpots of stone according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons of peace. So we're talking about 120 to 180 gallons of water, or what today would be about 800 bottles of wine. 800 bottles! Think about that.

So why did Christ supply them with so much wine there? Well, probably again, because this wedding feast, being a long celebration, is going to go on several more days. And that's how much more wine would be needed to supply the guests. Let's talk a minute here, a little archaeological background about these waterpots and the purification that is mentioned here. What's going on here?

Here's a photograph of several that have been found and obviously shattered and reassembled here. You can see some of these in some of the museums in Jerusalem, if you're privileged to go there. And this is exactly what they look like. And as you can see, some of those are quite large. I mean, they're, you know, yea big, carved out of solid stone, which is obviously an enormous undertaking considering the technology of that date. And they found a number of these throughout Israel there. And this has to do with Jewish ideas of ritual purity. And we know from Jewish writings around this time that stone vessels were considered to be immune to becoming impure.

For instance, if you had a clay cooking pot and, let's just say hypothetically, a mouse came up on your shelf and fell in the cooking pot and couldn't get out and died, that vessel would be unclean, impure. You would have to break it, throw it on. You couldn't use it anymore.

Whereas stone vessels were considered to be immune from becoming impure. So that's what this is talking about. So the Jews of that day went to great effort and expense to produce these quite elaborate stone vessels for ritual hand-washings. And they would be, the way they would typically be used is they would be filled with water. And people would then use these smaller vessels that we see down here at the bottom that kind of look like coffee mugs.

And they're a little bit bigger than that. They're about a big. And what they would do is dip these stone vessels, which also are immune from impurity, into the big stone jars and use those to pour water over their hands to ritually wash before eating. And if you ever go to the western wall today, you can actually see big fountains set up there where every Jew who approaches the western wall to pray will go through this ritual washing. And I notice, well you may notice this one jar here that has handles on either side. And they actually have plastic ones at the western wall today where the Jews will fill this basin. And it has a handle on each side, so they'll fill it with water. And then they'll pour with one hand over the other hand to rinse it off.

And when it is cleaned, then they'll use the other handle of the jar to pour on the other hand. So you're not mixing your hands and defiling yourself by the container that you're using. So this is the earlier predecessor of that. Connie, do you remember those plastic ones with the two handles there?

So here's the 2,000-year-old version of that. So I don't think Rubbermaid was around back then, but yeah. Yeah, in the restrooms, too. Yeah, they would have those there for washing. Yeah, because you don't want to contaminate yourself while you're doing this. So this custom actually goes back 2,000 years and it's still practiced today there. Yeah, as Connie says, you don't worry about the person before you. That's his problem, I guess. So this is what is going on. And from an archaeological standpoint, this is rather interesting because these stone vessels were only used during the first century. They weren't used before that. When the Romans came in, crushed the Jewish rebellion in 70 AD and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem that ended that system. And those stone vessels fell out of use during that time. So what implications does that have for what we're reading about here? Well, for those who disbelieve the Gospels, who don't believe that John really wrote this, that the Gospels weren't really written in the first century but were written a century or two after that, they've got a problem there. Because how would somebody writing a century or two later when this custom is long passed out of use know that the Jews actually used these stone vessels and that they were used for ritual washing? Well, they wouldn't know that. So again, this is just one of the many little internal evidences that the Gospels were indeed written during the first century when they claimed to be and by the individuals that they claimed to be. So that's just a little tidbit in there that helps us dismiss the criticisms of some of these people who don't believe the Bible. So back to the story then, John 2 and verse 7, Jesus said to them to the servants, fill the water pots with water, and they filled them up to the brim, right up to the brim. And he said to them, draw some out now and take it to the master of the feast. And the servants took it. When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom. And he said to him, every man at the beginning of a wedding feast sets out the good wine. And when the guests have well drunk, when they're snorkered, semi-snorkered, whatever, their taste buds are a little dull there, then they bring out the cheap stuff, the mad dog 2020, the two-buck chuck, whatever.

Then the inferior. But you have kept the good wine until now. This is what's going on. Why did you save the good stuff for last?

So that's what is going on here.

And verse 11, this beginning of signs Jesus did at Enkanov Galilee, and manifested his glory this way, and his disciples believed in him.

As we noted in an earlier study, there are these various sources like the Gospel of Thomas, I believe it is, some of these apocryphal books that claim that Jesus as a child was doing miracles. However, John is pretty clear here that this miracle here is the beginning of signs, or miracles, that Jesus did. He had not performed miracles as a child. This is the beginning. This is his first miracle. Yes, Dave. Just something occurred to me back in 1 Corinthians 4, where Jesus was saying, my hour is not yet come. I wonder if Jesus has kind of interpreted this as saying, he wants wine. Which leads me to Matthew 26-29, what the castle was going on. It gives us opportunity to take wine. Jesus says, but I say it to you, I will not drink it. It is true to find, from now on until the day might drink it new, with you in my father's kingdom. I think that is the kind of fulfillment of that, when his hour would come when he would drink the wine. I thought about getting into that discussion, but decided not to for lack of time here.

I have got to be tight on time today. Good observation. I appreciate that.

By the way, for guests and visitors, if you have a question or comment, feel free to raise your hand about this as we are going through. We may touch on that a little bit later. I have something else that ties in with that that may give us some insight on that as well. Jesus actually uses that phrase or something very similar to it a number of times in the Gospels about my hour or my time. You can do a search on your own for those terms. It pops up fairly regularly there in the Gospels a number of times. He is very careful about how and when he reveals himself. Depending on what his audience is, where he is geographically, there are some places where he is very open about who and what he is. Some places where, for instance, he heals somebody and says, Don't tell anybody.

Whereas other places he heals somebody and says, Go and tell what has happened to you.

So it really gets into the cultural and geographic background that we'll touch on in another few cases when we get to the background of Galilee when he moves up there. That helps us make sense out of why he is doing that in some circumstances and doing the opposite in other circumstances there. It's a fairly long involved discussion there, though. So anyway, this is the beginning of signs here, as we said. I'd like to shift gears here now for a minute because, up until now, we've largely been covering the background, the setting, but now we're actually getting into Jesus Christ's ministry, his miracles, healings, his teachings, and so on. And I'd like to bring up something now that we need to introduce a new element into our thinking as we go forward. I'd like us to think of four key questions for us going forward as we read through these accounts in the Bible. Four key questions. Please write these down.

These are things for us to think about as we read these accounts. We'll touch on it sometimes in class, depending on how much time we have. But it's mostly for your own benefit. So these four questions I want us to think about are, as we read, first, what does this teach us about the nature and character of God? What we're reading about? What does this teach us about the nature and the character of God? And by God, I mean both God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son.

Second question, what does this teach us about the way God interacts with his people and mankind?

What does this teach us about the way God interacts with his people and mankind?

And again, God in this context being the Father and Jesus Christ.

There will be a test on these, but it's a test at the end of your life whether you've paid attention.

Third question, what does this mean for your relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ? What does this mean for your relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ? Because that's where the rubber meets the road. That's a key factor.

And the last of the four key questions is, what does this teach us about Satan?

The adversary of God and mankind. What does this teach us about Satan?

The adversary of God and mankind. And by extension, how he operates and what he does.

So, why ask these questions as we study the Gospels? Well, because, to be blunt, this is the whole point of God's Word. This is the whole point that we learn about God's nature, that we learn about God's character, that we learn about how he interacts with us, that we learn about what this means in terms of our relationship with the Father and with Jesus Christ, and that we learn about our adversary and how he operates and what his goals and methods are. This is why God has given us his Word, the Bible, so that we might think about and understand these four key questions here that relate to us. So, in line with these four questions, we'll do a little bit of an exercise here today. When we think about or study this miracle of Jesus turning the water into wine here at Kana, what do we learn by asking these four questions about this?

I'm going to make you think about this here for a little while here. Let's take the last question first. What does this teach us about Satan, their adversary? Well, not much, because Satan isn't mentioned here. He doesn't show up, he doesn't factor into the story at all. So, really, this question is kind of irrelevant to this particular topic that we're talking about today.

So, let's move to other questions here on this list. What does this miracle at Kana teach us about the nature and character of God, about the way he interacts with his people, the church, those whom he has called, and mankind as a whole? And what does this mean for your relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ? In preparation for this, I jotted down several different points here to take away from this. And maybe you have some you can add as you think about this. So, let's just go through and think about a few things that this miracle teaches us about God and about Jesus Christ. So, a first point that came to mind for me, and under the question, what does this teach us? First of all, God is kind. God is considerate. He's kind and considerate. What do I mean by that? Well, again, the circumstances there.

You have this new couple who are getting married. You have their families there in the village, and typically a village would be composed of several extended families, family groups there.

So, God blesses this young couple getting married and their families who are all there with a miracle. Why? Why does He turn the water into wine? Well, it boils down to the simple fact, as I mentioned, that this is the biggest social occasion in their lifetime for the couple getting married, and one of the biggest of their lifetime for their families there. And that's the background of what is going on here. And for the wine to have run out on this huge social occasion for them would have been a huge social blunder in that culture, and it would have taken the newlyweds and their families years to get over the stigma, the embarrassment of that situation.

So, Jesus Christ performs this miracle simply because He is kind and considerate.

So, what does this mean? Let's ask another one of the questions. What does this mean for your relationship with God? The implications of this are pretty simple.

If God is kind and considerate, He will be kind and considerate toward you.

He will be kind and considerate toward you. God is, after all, a loving Father. He is a loving Father who gives us every good and perfect gift, as is mentioned later on in the Scripture, including eternal life in His family and in His kingdom. What about Jesus Christ? Jesus gave us the ultimate gift. He surrendered His divinity, the glory, the majesty that He had with the Father before the creation of the world so He could come to earth as a physical human being and show us how we should live and also to give His life as an offering for our sins, that we might be reconciled to the Father, that we might be forgiven and have our sins covered and received, that gift of eternal life. So God is definitely kind and considerate in the way that He does. That's the overall picture. We could all probably go on for hours about the little ways that God is involved in our lives and shows that kindness and consideration toward us here. We'll move on through these fairly quickly here. The second point we learned from this is that God is generous in giving. This obviously overlaps to some extent with the other. But God is generous. He is a giving God. Again, as we've heard for years in the Church, the two ways of life, of give and get. And God does have a way of life of giving here. By generous, how much wine was created? Again, about maybe 150 gallons, 120 to 180 gallons, or about 800 bottles of wine for this village of maybe two to four hundred people there. That's an enormous amount of wine that is created there. He could have created just a fraction of that. Just a case, maybe. But no, He didn't do that. He went above and beyond in His generosity because He is very generous. And He made this a wedding celebration that nobody is going to forget for a long time. Believe me, this much wine, this much fine wine in that culture. But again, that's because God is generous in giving.

So what does that mean? What are the implications of that for our relationship with God? Well, again, if He is generous in giving by His nature, He will be generous in giving toward us, toward each of us as well. And we could cite many, many scriptures about that, but we won't for lack of time. But we know that everything that God does toward us is for our good and is a blessing for us. We know He gives us His laws as a blessing to show us how we should live and how we can be blessed and enjoy life. He gives us His Word, His Bible, as a blessing to us so we can learn how to live. Rather, we know He gives us His Spirit as a blessing to us. And we can go on and on with everything that He gives us. He does that because He is generous in giving.

Another point to bring out here is that God meets our genuine needs. A need was there. They had run out of wine, and Jesus performed a miracle to take care of that need. He didn't have to, wasn't required to, but He did it again because He is kind and considerate and generous in giving.

What are the implications of that for our relationship with God? Well, again, He will meet our needs also. He will meet our needs also. He may not give us all of our wants, everything that we want, but He will give us what we need. He will take care of His people there.

As Christ says later on, if God closed the flowers of the field, how much more so will He do you, whom He loves, His beloved children. So He will meet our needs, not necessarily all of our wants.

Another point, God is a God of quality. Again, He produced the very best wine, not ripple, Boone's Farm, Tube of Chuck, Mad Dog 2020, whatever, the cheap stuff that you drank in college days there. But no, He miraculously made the best wine as the people there readily recognized.

Their God is a God of quality. What does that mean for us? Well, He wants us to be a people of quality. He wants us to be a people of quality. He wants you to be a person individually of quality.

By that I mean, Matthew 5, 48, you can write this down. Become you therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. Pretty tall order. Is that talking about quality? You bet it is.

We're going to be perfect as God is perfect. We've got to be people of quality there.

We could go on and talk about that for hours and hours here. He wants us to recognize quality and excellence and to incorporate that into our lives as best we can. That is what God is looking for, because He is a God of quality. I'm not saying go out and spin beyond your means or anything like that. We have to exercise wisdom in that. But He does want us to be a people of quality, because He is a God of quality. Another point, again, I'm ripping through these fairly quickly. If you want me to go over them later on, we can do that. God wants us to be happy. God wants us to be happy.

Here Jesus performed a miracle, strictly so a celebration could go on for several more days.

And He creates enough wine for that to happen there. He didn't want to see the party break up, and everybody had to go home. No, God wants us to be happy. As we see from this, what does this mean for our relationship with God? He will help us to be happy. He will help us to be happy. Again, He is kind. He is considerate. He is generous. He is a giving God. He gives us His Spirit. What are the fruit that is produced by that Spirit? Love. What's the second one? Joy. Or happiness, in other words. One of the fruit of God's Spirit is happiness. Joy that He wants from us.

It goes on. Peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control.

The other fruit. But I find it interesting. The second one, after love, is joy. God wants us to be a happy people. We do indeed have a lot of things to be happy about. We'll be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday here coming up, showing our need to be thankful and happy for the many blessings that God has given us. If we are utilizing God's Spirit, if we are letting it grow and work within us, then one of the fruits that should be manifest in our lives is the fruit of joy, of happiness there. We should be a happy and a positive and a forward-looking people there.

And we should be thankful and happy for all that He gives and all that He has given us.

Another point here. I wrote this down. It just came up with seven off the top of my head here. That wasn't deliberate. I just counted them up after I was done. But God wants to be involved in your life, even in the details. If you think about it, the circumstance of this miracle is that God or Jesus Christ performs His first miracle just to prevent this newlywed couple from being embarrassed and humiliated and from their community. And again, He does this because He's a kind and considerate and generous and giving God. What does this mean for your relationship with God? Again, it means He will be involved in your life if you let Him. If you let Him.

Think about it. He called you. Why did He call you? He called you to be His son or His daughter.

He called you to be a part of His Church. He made the first step. He reached out to us, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He made the first step, reaching out for us and calling us to Him. We know that from John 6.44. No one can come to Me unless God the Father draw Him. So God reaches out, draws us while we are still in our sins, and calls us to be a part of His family. Why does He do that? Because He wants to spend all eternity with you. With you. All eternity. Forever. But He won't force it. He's not going to force that. He's not going to force you to make that decision there. You have to accept Him and allow Him into your life to be a part of it. So He will be involved in your life if you let Him. And last point of these seven, God is involved in the small things. Think about the setting of this miracle. It didn't take place in Jerusalem with thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. It didn't take place in one of the holy days when there's maybe a million people or more there in Jerusalem. No, it takes place in kind of a little village of two or three hundred, four hundred people, maybe, often the kind of the backwoods there of Galilee. It took place in a small village. They are not in front of great crowds there. So God is involved in the small things. And what does this mean for our relationship with God? It means He will be involved in your small things if you let Him, if you allow Him. He will be involved if you allow Him. How many times has God been involved in the small things in your life? Again, we can talk about that for hours. The times He's protected us, the times He's protected us from harm, from embarrassment. Like this couple, this newlywed couple here protects them from embarrassment before their whole community there. The times He's answered our prayers, large or small, for healing or maybe a little bit of extra money till my paycheck comes. Things like that. The many times He's blessed us and we didn't even know about it until later. There, and on and on it goes. Many, many ways that God has blessed us. But again, we have to want Him to be involved and we have to be willing to let Him be involved.

So again, these are four key questions we ought to be thinking about as we go through and read these Gospels. Sometimes we'll bring these up and discuss them in class, depending on how much time we have. Anyone want to add any others that you might have thought of? I realize it's kind of springing this on you here, but anything else come to mind about this miracle of water turning into wine here? Yes, Natalie? Good. God is a God of abundance. He gives more than enough.

That's interesting. What did Jesus tell him to do with the stone pots? He'd fill them to the brim right up to overflowing. Not going to leave it short by a couple of inches.

So, good point. God is a God of abundance. He's very abundant in His giving and His generosity and the way He does things. Of course, that's a quality He would like to see reflected in us as His people. Yes, Sheila? Right. True. Good point. One of God's commandments, Fifth Commandment, is to honor your father and your mother. Jesus Christ was honoring His mother in this. She saw a need. She brought it to His attention. Even though He was hesitant about it, He clearly is. He goes ahead anyway and honors His mother in carrying out this miracle. Yes, Faye?

Yes, interesting point. When He says, My hour is not yet come—I'm repeating this for the benefit of the tape or those who may not be able to hear it. When He says, My hour is not yet come, He clearly had a plan. He knew where things are going, how they're playing out.

But He deviates from it somewhat in this extent. So, yes, God does change His plans. God can change His mind about things. You might think back to Abraham and negotiating, if you will, over over the sins of Sodom. If you can find 50 righteous men, will you spare the city? If you can find 20, will you spare the city? If you can find 10, will you spare the city?

Abraham is kind of negotiating with God there. That's a whole interesting story.

Might get into one of these days there, too. But, yes, God is willing to change His plans, what He's doing in some ways. Yes, Dave?

For the benefit of the recording, the miracle that Jesus performs is one of changing the nature of something, from water to wine. And your second point, again, to summarize...

The miracle that happens takes place at a wedding feast.

Of course, when is our ultimate change going to be in preparation for that wedding feast?

Since you mentioned that, I'll go ahead and touch on the other point that I was debating, whether to bring up earlier. Maybe this is an appropriate time, because it actually ties in with those points. We've talked about the term, rim-es. We'll discuss it here a little bit more. Rim-es is a concept we've been talking about quite a bit. It's a Hebrew word, R-E-M-E-Z, which means to hint, or clue, or look back. There are times, and we'll talk about one today, when there's a rim-es, it looks forward as well. One person I heard this concept from calls it a zemer, rim-es backwards. It's a zemer when it looks forward. He talked about this miracle as a zemer, because what does Christ do? He's turning water into wine. What is wine symbolic of in Scripture, of Christ's blood? There we learn from Passover. So, yes, it is the blood of Christ that transforms us, that allows us to be transformed and to have that ultimate transformation there.

To be a part of that wedding feast, that marriage feast, in the kingdom there.

Won't go into it in a whole lot of detail, but that was the basic point that he made, that even in Christ's miracles... Well, actually, if you think of all of his miracles of healing, what do they point forward to? They point forward to the time after Christ's return, when healings are going to be the norm throughout the world, when everybody is going to be healed, when the blind see, when the deaf can hear, and the dumb speak, and the lame leap like a deer.

And so on. So, in that sense, every one of Christ's miracles is a zebra, you might say, looking forward to that miraculously age, the messianic age, when Christ will return.

See, a lot of food for thought. I think you can begin to see the value of these questions now, because if you think about each of these things and just ask yourself, what does this teach us about God and about Jesus Christ? What are the implications of that for us and our relationship?

And we'll touch on later on examples. When Satan gets introduced into the story, how does he operate and what can we learn from that to be warned about how he operates? So, good discussion here. I think you can see the value of these questions now in your study. You may just want to write these out and put them up there at your desk when you study God's Word. And cautionally, think about these as we go through it. So, we'll go ahead and wrap up this particular section here.

Boy, I can see I'm running way short on time. So, John 2 and verse 12, wrapping up this, after this, he went down to Capernaum. He, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they did not stay there many days. So, notice this says they went down to Capernaum. Again, this illustrates that whoever's writing this knows about the geography of this area.

On a map, they went down, they're up here in the foothills in Cana, and they go down to Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is, I think off the top of my head, about 800 feet below sea level in the Jordan Rift Valley there. So, they are going down. So, the writer of this knows that he's familiar in writing firsthand about the geography of that land there. I'd like to do a digression at this point to cover a couple of things that I wasn't sure when to best fit them in in this series of studies. So, this seems like an appropriate place before we get too far along in the material and kind of lose sight of this. Notice here where we were.

Let's back up to this last verse.

Whoops! Too many. After this, he went down to Capernaum. He, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples. Somebody's conspicuously missing here. Joseph, his father, mentions his mother, mentions his disciples. The father would have normally played, as the patriarch, as the head of the family, would have played a prominent role, would have been mentioned here. If Joseph is still alive, the last time we saw Joseph mention was when Jesus is 12 years old, when he goes to the temple for the Passover there with Joseph and Mary. And you remember the story of him being there in the temple and debating and reading and asking questions of the teachers of the law there at the temple. That's the last time Joseph is mentioned when Jesus is age 12. Now Jesus is age 30. And Joseph, rather, has passed from the scene. He's not mentioned from that point forward. So sometime, obviously, during these 18 years, from Jesus is 12 to where he's 30, Joseph has died, leaving Jesus, who is the firstborn son, in that culture he would have become the new head of the family. We don't know how old Jesus was when this happened. I would have to assume he's certainly not 18 or 19. I think that would be too young to have that pressure forced on him. But quite possibly in his early 20s, something like that would be my best guess. So Jesus becomes essentially the new head of the household with four younger brothers, that we talked about before, and at least two sisters, maybe more, to help take care of. So Jesus is thrust into a new situation where he has to learn things that he would not have learned otherwise. I want us to think about this for a minute here.

Let's analyze this from the perspective of Jesus being our High Priest and our Intercessor.

Hebrews 4 and verse 15. Familiar passage. I'll read it from the new Revised Standard version here.

It says, For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested.

The reason I chose this version is that it says tested instead of tempted. The Greek word can actually mean both. It means to put something to the test, or to test its quality. That sort of thing. I like this version because it's not strictly talking about temptation, but testing.

Putting to the test. As we are, yet without sin. This is very important. Let's examine the circumstances from this perspective here. We know that we have an elder brother and a High Priest who is able to help us in all of our trials and all of our tests. Why? Because he's been there.

Because he's been there and done that. He's gone through it. He knows what it's like to go through the things that we go through in life. That's why he had to come as a physical human baby to be born, to live for 33 and a half years here.

So he could go through all the things we experience in this life. So he could be our judge. God the Father gave Christ the judgment. We will come to that later on in the Gospels. Why? Why did he entrust Christ with all the judging? Well, because he's been here. He's lived here. He's walked in our shoes and knows what it's like. So how did Jesus learn a lot of the basic things that we go through every day in life?

Well, obviously, again, he's physical. He's living there. But I'd like to look at this from this perspective. Because with Jesus dying, while Jesus Christ is a young man, we know that Jesus never married. So Jesus never knew what it was like to experience married life on the physical plane, as we do. He didn't know what it was like to rear children. Those are the basics of human life. We marry, we have children, and so on. However, by these unique circumstances, I've often wondered why would God the Father allow Jesus' stepfather to die?

And this is the answer. So he could experience the things that we go through in this life in terms of marriage and family. Because with Joseph dying and Jesus becoming the new head of the family, what's happening? He is, in essence, becoming the surrogate father to his, at least six, maybe more, younger brothers and sisters. He's becoming the father figure, not just the elder brother. He's adopting a new role now as the father, as the patriarch of that family.

He's becoming something, I hate to use the term surrogate husband, to marry because that has wrong connotations. But when Joseph dies, who's going to comfort Mary? It would be Jesus, as the oldest son there. So Jesus, although he was never married, under these circumstances he was able to learn about the things that we go through in life in terms of marriage and family and the lessons that come from that.

Think about it. He had to become the family breadwinner with Joseph out of the picture there. He had to learn what it's like to be responsible for keeping a family clothed and fed.

He's got at least six younger brothers and sisters that need clothing, that outgrow their clothing, that need food, need to eat every day. And that burden is now on his shoulders. That's why I think it's probably sometime in his 20s when this happens as opposed to an 18 or 19 year old, something like that. He had to see that his younger brothers and sisters get off to school a long time.

Down at the local synagogue, like we've talked about before, needs to make sure that they're dressed and ready for Sabbath services at the local synagogue. To see that there's food in the pantry, to see that the family garden is taken care of, that they've got the seeds in the ground at the right time, that the garden is properly tended and bringing up food for the family. He has to see to the family budget to make sure that the bills are paid on time.

And all of the tremendous number of everyday details that we have to deal with in this life. It's not like Jesus suddenly reaches adulthood and suddenly he's out walking around traipsing all over the land with people supporting him and inviting him to eat. No, he's got family responsibilities here. And this is the only way that he would learn that, is through these circumstances. And he needed to learn all of that because, again, these are the things that we go through every day of our lives here. And so we could have a high priest, as it says here, who has been there, who has done that, who is able to sympathize with us in all of these things that we go through in life.

So without a wife and children of his own, he became not just an older brother, but again a surrogate father to his younger brothers and sisters. Half brothers and half sisters, actually. So although he was never physically married in this way, he was able to learn and go through those things that we go through in this life as well.

In the same way, there's another important aspect of that because after our spouses and after our families, what's the next most important responsibility that most of us have? It's our job, our employment situation. What happens when Joseph dies and is out of the picture and Jesus has to step in and become to replace him? Well, he has to become the new owner-manager of the family business there.

That's the way the world works. It worked at that time. He needed to learn what our work experiences are like and employment experiences are like. He becomes the manager of the family business there. In addition to being responsible for this large family of at least seven siblings there, including himself, he has to deal with customers, he has to deal with contracts, and living up to those contracts, reinforcing those contracts. He has to deal with training employees, he has to deal with quality control, with working with debtors, with collecting bills, with management and planning for the business, and all the other numerous details that go into our employment life there. With Joseph passing from the scene, Jesus has to step into both of these roles as a surrogate father to his younger brothers and sisters, and also as the one who now is responsible for owning and operating the family business essentially there. And again, he had to learn to deal with these things because these are the things that we have to deal with for most of our adult lives. There's a great deal to learn here about human relationships, about human interaction with other people, family members, employees, vendors, all of this that he would not have learned any other way had he not been thrust into this position here. And this is why and how I think he spent those 18 missing years from age 12 to age 30. And Joseph disappeared somewhere in that time period there. I think he had to go through this learning experience here for a number of those years so that he can truly be our High Priest and to experience everything as we do in our lives. Again, he wouldn't have learned any other way on that physical level there. I wanted to interject that in there, help us plug it into our thinking somewhat, and also give us, frankly, a better appreciation of this, knowing that he has gone through all of that. He's had to deal with difficult family issues and maybe the teenage brothers and sisters there and this kind of thing. So I think that helps us add another perspective and understanding to this, again, that he would not have been able to learn any other way.

So as part of this digression, I'd like to look at another aspect that fits into this as well.

I've referred to this a few times before, so let's jump right into it here. And that is, is what was the occupation of Jesus and Joseph? Matthew 13, 54 and 55 says, and when he had come to his own country, he taught them in their synagogue so that they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom in these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter's son? So this tells us that Jesus was the son of a carpenter, Joseph.

And Mark, speaking of Jesus himself, says, is this not the carpenter? So Joseph is called a carpenter, Jesus is called a carpenter. So what does this mean? You've probably seen all the cards, Bible illustrations over the years of Jesus and Joseph being a carpenter.

Is this really what this is talking about? Let's dig into the culture a little bit, gain some other understanding on this. The carpenter that's translated into English is the Greek word tekton. T-E-K-T-O-N. Hopefully you can see it down here at the bottom.

Tekton. T-E-K-T-O-N. In Greek it means a builder or a craftsman.

Builder or craftsman. Somebody who makes things. Somebody who builds things, in other words.

When the King James Version translators come to this word, tekton, they know it means a builder.

Where are the King James translators based? They're in England. They say this word for a builder.

What do you build with in England in the 1600s? No, actually you build with wood because there's huge forests all over there. That's why they put in carpenter because that was the building material that they commonly used in England. I'll get back to that in just a minute, Pat.

So that was a predominant building material. So they see the word builder. They say, oh, well, Jesus is a carpenter. None of these translators have ever been to the Holy Land. They don't know what the land is like over there. So they substitute carpenter in there instead of builder. Again, they do that because all the builders in England are working with wood.

That's the most common building material. And every translation since then has substituted carpenter in there for tecton. But in Judea and Galilee in the first century, the common building material was stone. If you've ever been there, it becomes very obvious to you. There's not much wood around there. Everything is made out of stone. The trees that are there are olive trees. And if you've seen the Russian olive trees around here, they're short, they're gnarly, twisted, brittle. You have palm trees, which are nice and straight and tall, but they're quite brittle as well. You don't want to cut them down because then you're cutting off your date palms.

There are oaks there, but they're more like our mountain scrub oaks. They're again short, gnarly, very twisted branches. So the woods that are there are not good for building materials.

They're generally used for doing things like internal rafters, as we see here, door frames, window frames, furniture, that kind of thing. But wood was pretty scarce. You had rocks everywhere in Judea and Galilee. But wood is a pretty scarce material. This is not to say Jesus never worked with wood because if he's a builder, he will need to build things like doors and window frames and that sort of thing. But my point is that builders were people who worked with stone and not with wood. Wood was just too scarce to build houses out of wood. So you built out of stone.

The houses were made with walls out of stone like this, like we see here. And then to kind of hold them together, they would make a plaster out of pulverized stone and mud and straw and other materials. And they would plaster the walls so that they'd look like our walls. I'll just give you a before and after photo here. So they would cover them with plaster. So you'd have walls that look pretty much like our walls today with this plaster there. So that is what a builder does in that day and that culture there. He builds, he works with stone there. And occasional wood, like the rafters and so on. But it's rather interesting if you go there. The rooms of the houses of that period were rarely more than about six or seven feet wide. Why is that? It's because they couldn't get wood for rafters longer than that. It tells you something else about the wood there. So there are also stone quarries all over the area around Nazareth, where Jesus grew up there. Stone quarries like that. You can see where they've chiseled out the stone blocks there. And this is the inferior stone that's left there. It doesn't make good building materials. So let's notice a few biblical indications that I think also help us see why this is probably the case. 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 10. Look at that. Notice what Paul says here.

According to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder and the Greek word here is architecton. We see that tecton in there again for builder.

I have laid the foundation and another builds on it. So Paul here compares himself to an architecton, a master builder. And you can see again the same word tecton in here.

Would you ever build a foundation out of wood? No, because wood is going to rot away in a few years from termites and organisms in the soil and all of that. So a tecton is somebody who builds, who lays a foundation out of stone. Not out of wood. Incidentally, if you didn't catch it, here's the root of our word architect. Architecton there goes back to the Greek meaning master builder, somebody who's in charge of the building project there. Let's look at another passage. So my point here is again tecton is clearly talking about somebody who lays a foundation who is working with stone, not wood. Let's look also at 1 Peter 2 and verses 4 and 5.

As we read this, think about who Peter is. Peter is the disciple who probably knows Jesus better than any of the others there. He's one who's right there with Jesus all the time. And look at what Peter says. We are coming to him, to Jesus Christ, as to a living stone rejected indeed by men.

And what he's talking about here, as I showed in the picture of the quarries, there's stone that is crumbly and brittle. It's not good for building materials. So some stones would be rejected by the builder as being inferior and not suitable. But chosen by God and precious, you also as living stones, living stones means good stone, high-quality stone, you as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So what is Peter saying here? Kind of eliminate some of the flowery language and get down to the basics here. What he's saying is that we, as members of God's church, are like stones being built up into a spiritual house. He's talking about a construction process of building a house. And what's he building it out of? Stones. Who's the stone mason who is building the house?

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. So nowhere, the reason I mentioned this in the previous scripture, is nowhere in the Bible do we see an analogy or a metaphor of Jesus Christ building with wood.

But we do see the metaphor of Jesus Christ building with stones.

And who are the stones? We are the stones that he's using to build his spiritual temple here.

And again, I think that is why Peter uses this specific metaphor here of building a house out of stones. That because Jesus Christ is, in my opinion, most likely a stone mason, somebody building with stones. Yes, he is a builder. Yes, he is a tecton, but he's building with the material that was available there in the culture and in the area of that time, which is stone, not so much wood. And this means that he was a very rugged, a very strong man from working and wrestling with these stones. My father was a stone mason. He owned his own business making stone monuments out of granite and marbled. And for years, during junior high and high school, I worked with him after school most days, working with stones, learning the tools, chiseling and carving and this kind of thing. And it'll make you muscular and strong and powerful there. And I think that is why Jesus Christ, when he confronted people, like when he threw the money changers out of the temple, as we'll talk about next, why did nobody argue with him? Well, I think because they would have done a mess with a stone mason. I don't want to mess with a guy who was used to working with stones and rock and this kind of thing. He was quite a powerful man, I think. So, any questions about that? Yes, Tim? It's a good comment. I can go through this a few little stuff.

Raise up stones. Yes, he has to do the work. Yeah. The single metaphor in the Bible that is used most often of God the Father and Jesus Christ is stone. It is interesting to think about that. There are many of them. Shepherd, shield, but what are two of the big ones? Rock and fortress.

He is my rock. He is my fortress. A fortress was built on a big cliff, in most cases, there to help defend it. Yes, David? I'm not sure, but could that be why the Jews considered stone incorruptible or not able to be unclean? I don't know. I haven't been able to find the origin of that belief, but possibly. Maybe they are viewing it as symbolic of the purity of God or something like that. I don't know. Good question, though. Yes, Faye?

Exactly. And Daniel, the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's image with a head of gold and so on. It is struck with a stone made without hands, which is symbolic of Jesus Christ coming as a Messiah, destroying that whole Babylon-ish system and filling the world there with that. Good observations.

Right. The law of God, the Ten Commandments, carved out on tablets of stone there to be permanent and durable there. So, yes, it got a lot of good. With the finger of God.

Because he threw them down. Right. Yes, God wrote the first copy of the Ten Commandments with his own finger, and then Moses had to do the second ones after he threw that down and broke them.

Let's see. I'm in a bit of a quandary here. I actually prepared a lot more material that would probably take another 20 to 30 minutes, which would push us a bit late.

And I can either cover that now or save it. Because of my schedule coming up in December, we won't have any of these classes because I have another good news due at the printer in early December. Then I have a week of council meetings, and I'm not scheduled to speak again until January, I think. So, if your brains and other parts of you can take it, I can go on for another 20 to 30 minutes, or I can cut it off and we can talk about it next time. So, any preferences? I see several hogs nutting up and down. Okay, keep it going. Okay, all right. Okay, I'll do that. Okay, the next part, and this is a fairly lengthy discussion here, but it's about the cleansing of the temple. And again, Jesus, indeed, he's a stone mason, which I think he is. This might shed a little light on why these people didn't argue with him when he does this.

So, we'll now pick up with the next part, John 2. And again, I'll try to rush through this pretty quickly here. John 2, verse 13. Now the passer of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When he had made a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.

Verse 16. And he said to those who sold doves, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise. So, what's going on here? Let's unpack this. Dissect it a bit. Back when we talked about John the Baptizer and how he is kind of the anti-priest, was the term I used because he's doing everything the opposite of the Jerusalem priesthood. The Jerusalem religious establishment is the term I use for it, because he is kind of protesting how corrupt the Jerusalem priesthood has become. So, what's going on here when we see Jesus carry out this action in such a forceful manner? To understand that, we need to understand the background of this that is not written in the Bible. Some of this will be a brief review of some of the material we covered, but it's been several months ago, so it's helpful to understand this. A little historical background. When the Romans made Herod the Great, the king of the Jews, was the title they gave him. This is in 37 BC. This is about 60 years before what we're reading about here. The Romans and some of the Jews saw this as a good money-making opportunity.

So, the Romans, to basically summarize it, basically, they started selling the office. It looks like Microsoft PowerPoint has crashed on me, but I'll go ahead while this gets rebooted here. Sorry about this. So, basically, the Romans started selling the office of the high priest to the highest bidder.

They see a good money-making opportunity here. In the 60 years leading up to what we're reading about here, there were 28 different high priests over 60 years. You can do the math. It's about a new high priest about every other year there. We'll just contrast that to God's instruction. What was God's instruction for a high priest? Two qualifications or two conditions. One, you had to be a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses. Two, it was a lifetime appointment.

A lifetime appointment. He was the high priest until he died. Let's see, getting close here now.

Hang on just a moment here. Let me catch back up to where we were.

So, the high priest was supposed to be a descendant of Aaron and was supposed to be in office until he died. So, the Romans and Herod, see this is a money-making opportunity, so they start selling it off to the highest bidder. So, basically, the bottom line is that the priesthood, the system that God had set up, has been totally corrupted now by this time.

Those involved in this scheme had a good thing going, at least for themselves.

Because Herod and his Roman backers got money from selling off that position. No doubt, a lot of that money also made its way back to Rome and to the emperor's coffers there, because Rome was a pretty corrupt system there. The Jews who bought the office of a high priest had a good thing going for themselves, because they could make a lot of money from this. That was because the high priest and his family or relatives could control everything that took place at the temple. Here's a depiction of the high priest's garments concept from the movie The Passion of the Christ, as to what they might have looked like here. So, they became very wealthy off this system.

Here's an artist's reconstruction, illustration of an actual priest's home that was excavated in Jerusalem that was found and excavated after the 67 war. Connie's been in there. The harm, several other members have been there to see this. It's actually called the Palatial Mansion. At first they thought it was a ruler, but as they excavated more, they found out this is actually a priest's house because of different things in it. You might notice the stone pots here, for instance, that we talked about earlier. They've actually found those in place buried in the rubble of this house, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. It was a mansion. It's actually looking out. You can see the temple in the background here with a balcony out looking over the Tyropian Valley to the temple there. This is kind of how the high priest and his family lived. They think this was probably the house of the high priest. They don't know it for sure. They can't prove it, but they do know it was a priestly house. What is going on then at the temple that enables the priest to live in such a luxurious lifestyle? Well, we see here in John's account with a mention of two things. One, money changers and the animals, the sheep, the oxen, and the doves that are sold as sacrifices here. So what's happening? Let's talk about these two. We'll talk about the money changers first. People are coming to Jerusalem, to the temple from all over the known world. You can read that in Acts 2, where the church starts. You read about, for instance, people coming from Parthia and Mesopotamia out to the east, coming from North Africa and Egypt down to the south, and the southwest, from Arabia down to the southeast, from Asia Minor up to the north. All these people are coming from hundreds, in some cases maybe a thousand or more miles, even from Rome, to Jerusalem, for the pilgrimage feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. When they come to Jerusalem, they're of course bringing their own local currency from the areas in which they live. The Roman Empire had its own standard coins that they issued there, but some of these areas, like Arabia and Parthia, had their own coinage, because they're not a part of the Roman Empire. So just as today, if we travel to Europe or Asia, someplace like that, we'd have to go to a money changer and change our US dollars into the local currency. Same thing is taking place there. They've got to change it into the local currency, local coins.

And what you would do at the temple is you would change your local coins to the official temple coin, which is shown here. It's called the Tyrian half-shekel. And it's chosen because it had a very high silver content. And I actually have some samples I want to share with you, if I can...

Oh yeah, here we go. Thank you, Colin. Now, two bags of this. I'll pass around.

And feel free to take a look at these, these are the types of coins that would have been in use at that time.

And there is a Tyrian half-shekel in each of these. You can see if you can find it. It's most easily recognized by the fact that it's silver and it has an eagle on the back, as we see here. This was the god Melkart here and the eagle on the back here. Again, these are minted entire, which is in modern-day Lebanon on the coast. You can take those out and look at them. Just be sure and return them to the bag. I'd hate to have Connie have to frisk everybody before you're allowed to leave here. But feel free to do that if you'd like. So you change your local coins, like these, into this temple half-shekel there. And it was required that each Jewish male, or Israelite male, to pay what was called the temple tax once a year at the temple. It was used for things such as purchasing firewood, for burning the offerings, for purchasing animals for the offerings.

We find this command back in Exodus 30, verses 11-14. Go through this quickly again.

This is what everyone among those who are numbered shall give. Half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary. A shekel is twenty garas. The half-shekel shall be an offering to the eternal. Everyone included among those who are numbered from twenty years old and above shall give an offering to the eternal. This is the origin of what's called the temple tax. We'll come across this term later on in the Gospels as well. The Jews at this point in time are not allowed to mint their own coins. The Roman Empire had a monopoly on that. They only used the standard Roman coinage issued by the emperors. The Jewish priesthood decided instead they would use the Tyrian half-shekel for the temple tax, again because of its high purity of silver. When the Israelite males, Jewish males, would come to the temple to pay that tax, they had to change their local coins like those in the bags for these Tyrian shekels. Instead of a small markup like a money changer today, maybe 3, 4, 5 percent, they would charge rates of upwards of maybe a hundred percent.

So they are ripping people off, royally, by doing this. Now a similar thing happened to the animals that are mentioned here, the sheep, the oxen, the doves. Why are they selling animals at the temple? Well, think about it. Again, people are coming from all over the world. If you're living in Arabia, you don't want to have to haul your goat 500 miles to bring them to Jerusalem to sacrifice. So it was offered as a service there, animals for sale, for sacrifice. However, they grossly abuse this system, as we'll see. Another thing, if you're living up around Galilee and you've got this lamb that you're going to sacrifice, and you bring the lamb to the temple as a sacrificial offering, of course we know that the animals had to be without blemish.

So what would happen is these priests would examine the animal and they would say, well, you know, this lamb you brought, he's got a scar on his leg, or one ear droops lower than the other, or it's got this wart on his side, and I'm sorry, this lamb is blemished and we can't sacrifice him. However, we have this special lamb with a temple seal of approval, and of course, it costs five times the going rate for lambs, but that's the price you pay for the privilege of honoring God. So, you know, just fork over your money and we'll give you this temple-approved lamb. So this is the type of thing that was going on. So they, too, would be ripping off people this way, too, by charging exorbitant rates well above, you know, maybe five, ten times what the going rate for a lamb was there. So this is the corrupt system that's going on. And these concessions, they were operated as concessions. Nobody could just come and set up your table as a money changer at the temple. This is all controlled, again, by the high priest, and by the high priest family, and his buddies, and all of this. So they've got a monopoly on all of this, and this is how they're getting so wealthy, by ripping off the people who are coming to the temple to worship God.

That's the background for this. Annas is one of the high priests that is mentioned in the Gospels.

As an illustration of this, he is one of the individuals who bought the office of high priest, which he held from AD 6 to AD 15. And he made himself very wealthy from it. So wealthy that he essentially had a family franchise there for several decades. He was followed, his high priest, by one of his sons, and then by a son-in-law. And the son-in-law is the Caiaphas, who's mentioned in relation to Christ's death and crucifixion. Then he was followed by four more sons, and eventually by one of his grandsons. So he's one of these people making a lot of money off this corrupt system here. Josephus describes Annas as a great hoarder up of money.

That's the way you described him here. So that tells us something about his personality and his motivation. So by this time, bottom line, this whole Jerusalem priesthood, the Jerusalem religious establishment, as I call it, has become totally corrupted by this system here. They would sell these concessions for money-changing or selling sacrificial animals. And then they would either get a cut or a kickback, a percentage or something, off of all of that. So the priests, who are supposed to be the examples of righteousness and representing God to people, are instead actually ripping people off. They're part of this corrupt system there that is taking advantage of the people who are coming there to worship, as God has told them to. And that is why Jesus, when he does this, what does he call this system? He says, My Father's house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves there, because they're stealing from the people there. And of course, when Jesus comes along then and he begins to threaten the power of this priesthood system here, what do they do?

Well, as we'll see, going through the Gospels, they do everything they can to discredit him initially, and when that doesn't work, they conspire to kill him, which is wrapped up at the end of Jesus Christ's ministry. Now, one question I ask, I won't discuss it, but John, I mentioned, places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Christ's ministry, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke place it at the end, in the last week of Christ's ministry. Why the discrepancy? Well, the obvious answer is that it actually happened twice. It happens at the beginning of Christ's ministry and again at the end. And the way I would characterize it is, at the beginning of Christ's ministry, what is Jesus doing? I would characterize it as he's firing a warning shot across the bow to let him know that he's a force to be reckoned with. And at the end, what seems to be happening is he knows what they're planning, he knows they're plotting to kill him, and he is essentially piling up the hatred, if you will, because he knows they're going to kill him, and he wants to make it very clear what their motivations are versus what his motivations are.

He's going to make it absolutely clear what they stand for and what he himself stands for there, and the great gulf between the two of those. I think that's the difference between and why it's recorded is happening at the beginning and at the end. His ministry is kind of bookmarked by these two events, and of course, throughout his ministry, he has this conflict with the Jerusalem religious establishment there. So after this happens then, verse 17, getting close to the end here, then his disciples remembered that it was written, "'Zeal for your house has eaten me up.'" And as we might guess, this is a remes, a hint, or a clue, to look back at something else written earlier in Scripture. This is a quote from Psalm 69 and verse 9, which says, "'Because the zeal for your house has eaten me up.'" Since this is a remes, and a remes is a hint or a clue to look for some bigger, deeper meaning there, what is the message that John is given by including this? Again, there are types of remes. There is action remes we've talked about. There is remes that is spoken, as in Jesus, and is teaching. There is written remes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I'll use it there. So John is giving us a written remes here, referring back to Psalm 69.

What is Psalm 69? It's a prophetic, messianic psalm about the Messiah's suffering leading up to His crucifixion. We actually find portions of Psalm 69 recorded in the Gospels. Here are two of them. Psalm 69 and verse 4. You probably recognize this. It says, "'Those who hate Me without a cause are more than the hairs of My head.'" That's quoted in John 15 and verse 25. Also Psalm 69, verse 21, "'They also gave Me gall for My food, and for My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.' And this is fulfilled when Jesus is crucified. Matthew 27, verse 34, Mark 15, verse 23, and Luke 23, verse 36. I won't read those. You can look them up yourself later.

Let's notice, since this is a messianic, prophetic psalm of the circumstances of Christ's death, there is, as I mentioned before, with Rimes. It's always helpful to read the verses before and after the Rimes to get the whole picture of what the person giving us the Rimes is trying to tell us. So what is John trying to tell us in this Rimes? We don't have time to cover the whole psalm, but let's just read a few verses here as we wrap this up. Put yourself, as we read this, think about Jesus Christ Himself saying these words under the circumstances leading up to His death. And He says, Let not those who wait for you, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed because of Me. Let not those who seek you be confounded because of Me, O God of Israel.

Because for your sake I have borne reproach, shame has covered my face.

Do you see that prophetically this is Jesus Christ crying out to God? There, as He's facing His fate, as He's facing crucifixion, these are His words, inspired to be written by King David a thousand years earlier. Continuing on, verse 8, I have become a stranger to my brothers. Again, His brothers, His family, abandoned Him, deserted Him. During this time it wouldn't be later until they would realize who He was. And an alien to my mother's children, because zeal for your house has eaten me up. And the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on Me. In other words, these people are really the enemies of God, but their reproach has fallen on Me. I'm the one suffering because of that. Continuing on, verse 10, When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that became my reproach. I also made sackcloth my garment. I became a byword to them.

And you might think of the people mocking and spitting on Christ and striking Him in the head, and this kind of thing, from the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman soldiers and so on. Those who sit in the gate speak against Me, and I am the song of the drunkards, again, people mocking Him, ridiculing Him. But as for Me, My prayer is to you, O Lord, in the acceptable time. O God, in the multitude of your mercy, hear Me in the truth of your salvation.

So He turns it around, very positively. But God, in spite of all these things that are falling on Me, I will be faithful to you. I will praise you. And I won't read any more than this. You can go home and read it yourself there. But again, the entire prophecy is about the last hours of Jesus Christ on earth as He is imprisoned and then being crucified and awaiting death.

So why does John include this remes, this particular remes, here at the beginning of Christ's ministry? Just as John earlier, as we've covered in previous classes, showed the conflict and the tension between John the Baptizer and the Jerusalem religious establishment. Again, I would characterize it as John is showing here the conflict between Jesus and the Jerusalem religious establishment and how that would ultimately play out. Again, bookending it with the events at the beginning of Christ's ministry and this opposition to Him throughout that three and a half years and then where that ultimately plays out in Christ's crucifixion. And death is foretold by David in this psalm written again a thousand years earlier. I think that is the point John is making with this particular remes, that he is pointing people backwards, pointing his readers back to Psalm 69, which in turns comes full circle and points people forward three and a half years into the future. That's why you say it's a remes. It points both backwards and forwards. It points back to David's psalm but points forward three and a half years to Christ's crucifixion there. So it's an unusual remes, a very unusual remes. It points both backwards as well as forward, prophetically. And to wrap this up, the last few verses.

So the Jews answered and said to him, What sign do you show to us since you do these things?

Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

Then the Jews said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple.

And will you raise it up in three days? And what this is talking about is Herod the Great had begun building this temple complex in the year 20 or 19 BC. And it was still being built and expanded now in 27, maybe 28 AD. And in fact, it would still be being built and expanded and worked on until just a few years before it's destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

The other construction actually lasted, well, 90 years, 80 something to 90 years. This whole gigantic complex is being built. Verse 21, Jesus was speaking of the temple of His body. Again, we've talked about rabbinical teaching, some in previous messages. So He gives them a cryptic answer to make them think. And they don't think.

They don't analyze it. Obviously, it's impossible that Jesus alone is going to rebuild this. Jesus is telling them, Hey, think about my answer. He gives them an impossible answer to encourage them to think. And they don't think about it. Instead, they assume He's talking about His body. So they obviously didn't get His point. Verse 22, Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples figured it out. They remembered what He had said, that He had said this to them. And they believed the Scripture and the Word which Jesus had said. So we'll wrap it up there for today. Any questions? Thoughts? Final observations? Yes, Tim?

Right. Exactly. Yeah, it adds a whole new dimension to the dynamics of the Gospels when we understand that the priesthood was corrupt like that. And you might contrast the reactions of the common people versus the priesthood. The common people love Jesus to a large extent. Obviously, not 100%.

And that's not to say that 100% of the priests were corrupt either, because there are some good ones.

They're not all that way. So I hesitate to paint them all with a broad brush. But in general, the people love Jesus and follow Him and hang on His every word. And the priests the whole time are plotting, how can we get rid of this guy because he's a threat to us here. So you read the Gospels with that background, and it just explains an awful lot of the motivations that aren't spelled out in the Gospels. Yes, Anna?

True. Things haven't changed much. We didn't have time to cover the four questions.

What does this episode of Jesus cleansing a temple teach us about God, about how He works with us, about the implications for us, and what does it teach us about Satan and how He works? Go home and think about that. I wish we had time to discuss that, but it would take another half hour that we don't have. But go home and think about those four questions, again, with everything we read about in the Gospels. Yes, Steve? Just another aspect of verse 4 of my hour that's not yet coming. We had just reached forward in what we were going through. Christ's focus, I'm sure, was on the Passover. He knew that that meant it. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we don't know how long the time lag is between the turning the water to wine to Passover. We assume that Jesus began His ministry around the Feast of Tabernacles, which would be in the fall.

I think that's probably right. It's not specifically mentioned anywhere, but about six months. So, so yeah, He deliberately chooses the circumstances and the time and the setting for when He does things like that to make a specific point. Yeah, yes, Pat? In the November of the Shoeot stood in the synagogue on the last great day of the Feast and read out of Isaiah and said, today this is fulfilled, which indicates that He started at the end of the Feast. Uh-huh. Right, right, yeah, it's clearly. Three and a half years, then goes to right. Yep, yes, Faye? Yes, true. Whistleblower law. Yeah, yeah, you start opposing the establishment and see where it gets you. Got Jesus killed, got all of His apostles killed. So yeah, the stakes are pretty high with that. I'm not sure who has my coins, but again, I don't want Connie to have to frisk you, but okay. So, okay, with that, we'll have a closing hymn.