Mosaic Teaching 143 - Mark 10:33-45; Matthew 20:20; Luke 19:1-2

Mosaic is an in-depth teaching discovering Jesus through all four of the Gospel accounts in the Bible. This teaching is led by Rev. Dr. Chad Foster, reaching into the Hebraic roots, Jewish roots, Torah references and messianic fulfillment of Jesus to find truth and life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Mosaic Teaching Service today. This is teaching number 143 as we go through the four Gospels of Jesus of Nazareth and look at those Gospels from that first century perspective. We're going to be looking this morning in Mark chapter 10 as well as a little bit in Luke 19. Probably flip over with a little bit of a parallel in Matthew as well. So kind of hitting three of the synoptics this morning, with a Jesus continuing that in-route journey to Jerusalem for that final trip of his earthly life. As that entourage is growing and he's having those interactions with individuals, including his disciples, on that journey. And today it's going to take him eventually into the area of Jericho. But let's uh first get started with prayer. So let's bow our heads for prayer. Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, and grant that we would so hear them. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we would embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given to us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. In Mosaic, we value our Bibles, love our Bibles. Always encourage you to bring your Bible with you to the Mosaic teaching service. But if you need one today, not a problem, just grab one in the pew, our chair around you. But please take a Bible, hold it up, and repeat after me. This is my Bible. Jesus is who it says He is. I am what it says I am. I can do what it says I can do. Today I will be taught the Word of God. My mind is alert. By God's grace, my heart is receptive. The Bible is the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living word of God. And today, my encounter with the Bible will transform and grow my faith. We will say together in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I'm going to be in Matthew or Mark chapter 10. Before we get going, though, I do want to make you aware of two new books for you if you are interested. A little bit different angles. One that I've written is called In the Shadows of the Cross. And what this is, it's kind of a devotional. It looks at 13 stories in the Old Testament. Most of them, almost all of them, except for one I just couldn't really resist because of the cross reference. Look at the stories in the Old Testament that involve wood. So you have the tree of life, you have Noah's ark with being made of gopher wood, you have Aaron's rod that blossoms, you have Isaac who has to carry the wood for his own sacrifice, and you have many others. But how each of those encounters in the Old Testament are foreshadowing the cross. And it's kind of written in devotional style. So that's called In the Shadows of the Cross. And then the second one is a short work that I've written, but it's near and dear to my heart. I've probably been working on it for a decade. It's a little more academic, but it does have Bible study to it. But it's looking at where the location of Golgotha is. So if you it's my microphone going in and out? All right. I might have to run back there and switch it out if it doesn't. But looking at where Golgotha is located, because a lot of people will argue that like Golgotha is not found on any map and so forth, so where was it located? And so, you know, uh spent a lot of research looking, especially in Hebrews, uh, to where that is, and I think I've pinpointed it to be the Mount of Olives and a specific location on the Mount of Olives. And then it also, when you're at that location on the Mount of Olives, there's a very interesting necropolis, uh, old cemetery, uh, ossuaries from the first century. And I kind of look at that necropolis and I look at the inscriptions that are on those ossuaries and uh reveal through not only the names that are on them and the decorations, and those there's pictures of them in the book, uh, but also what the mathematical likelihood of all of those specific names occurring in that location, what that entails, um, and so forth. So uh it's called Golgotha Revealed. So I think it's uh uh if you have the land, the lamb, and the light book, this is a good kind of um companion to that. So those two are available for you if you are interested. They're $10 each. Uh I'll be available out in the nook after class, uh, but uh in the shadow of the cross, a nice devotional again, looking at the foreshadowing of the cross in the Old Testament. And Golgotha revealed looking at the location of the cross crucifixion of Jesus, uh, why it had to be east of the city, and specifically uh this location on the Mount of Olives. Uh so um, and if you're listening online, YouTube, the podcast, you can just contact us and we can get those to you. All right, so with that, let's dive back into Mark chapter 10, uh verse 33. So we're in the context of things. Again, Jesus has been going up to Jerusalem. Uh you're always going up to Jerusalem, even if you happen to be going down literally to Jerusalem. Um, but you're always going up because it's a pilgrimage, it's a holy site, it's a very special uh place. So he's it's the Bible will always talk about going up to Jerusalem. And as he's been going there, he's been having these dialogues with different people. And we're gonna see here that it's gonna be the third time uh that Jesus in the Gospels very clearly makes the prediction uh of his passion, of his upcoming suffering, death, and resurrection. Uh, and so this will be the third of those very clear predictions. Again, trying to equip uh his followers, especially his closest followers, for what was soon to be happening. So let's look at Mark chapter 10, verse 33, and let's read these words together. Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the leading priests and the scholars, and they will condemn him to die. So the fellowship, the entourage, they cross the Jordan, they enter into what it would be properly Judea. An ominous, foreboding sense of danger, no doubt, settles over the company of pilgrims, uh, because the last time Jesus was in Jerusalem, things got a little bit heated, things got a little bit tense, no doubt uh his followers are thinking about that, are worried about that, thinking things could once again spiral out of control. Uh just a verse earlier, verse 32, it says they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and the disciples all knew the danger that their return to Judea, what it potentially meant for Jesus. Their last visit to Jerusalem uh almost ended in a stoning. And nonetheless, though, and this is what's um oftentimes missed in the Gospel of Mark. Mark is at times a very humorous gospel, uh, but it's it's unfortunately missed. Uh the idea that's being portrayed in Mark's gospel is his disciples are kind of um have a little bit of trepidation about this. Uh they would prefer not to be doing this, and they don't want to do this, and uh they they remember very vividly what happened not that too long in the past, uh, where not only did Jesus almost get stoned, but where they almost met their end. And yet here they are headed back. And Mark describes it with Jesus literally like a child running out in front of them, like urging quickly heading out in front of them, striding ahead of them, very purposeful, very resolute. Uh, you know, again in verse 32, Jesus was walking on ahead of the disciples, and they were amazed, right? In English, you just kind of miss the funniness of that in the Greek. What you need to imagine is think about uh parents at, you know, Six Flags or some amusement park, and they're a child that's just just head over heels and excited and keeps running off, right? And they're trying to like keep up and they're just like, Can you believe this kid? Right? That's what that verse is trying to describe about Jesus, right? He's eager to get there, he's wanting to get there, and so he's he's marching fast, he's walking faster, he's all ahead of them, and it's it's catching them off guard. Okay, they're startled by it. The larger company of Galileans who traveled with them for the festivals, followed after the band of disciples, and it even says those who followed were fearful, um, but they did not know what to expect. It seemed that the culmination of things was drawing near. Uh, as I've tried to point out in Mosaic as we've been going along, uh, things have been getting more and more tense. Jesus has been getting getting more and more even confrontational. Uh, some type of collision was inevitable, and they knew that. And they wondered if Jesus went to Jerusalem. Uh is he going perhaps to even take up the throne of David? And so Jesus takes the twelve aside, and for the third time, he explicitly warns them about what they could anticipate in Jerusalem. Now, if you may recall, he had warned them the very first time, all the way back in Caesarea Philippi, right? When in the gospel narratives and all of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where things shift towards Jerusalem. Uh, the gospel narratives largely are Galilean. They're all about Galilee, they're all about Jesus' ministry in the Galilee, his miracles, his teachings, uh, his gathering disciples, and so forth. He does his periodic trips to Jerusalem, but they're really all about the Galilean ministry until Caesarea Philippi. And then at Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus asks, who do people say that I am? And Peter says, You're, you know, you're the Son of God. And then right after that's the transfiguration and so forth. Everything in the Gospels, the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, really turn and focus. We're headed to Jerusalem, right? And there at that point in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus first tells them in no uncertain terms, nothing cryptic, nothing parable, nothing, you know, symbolic. He just flat out tells them, He's going to go to Jerusalem, he's going to suffer, he's going to die, he's going to rise again. Um, and then he has told them one other time, and now as they're prepared to complete the last leg of their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he tells them this for a third time. He says, Behold, we're going up to Jerusalem, the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priest and the scribes. They will condemn him to death, and he will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him, and three days later he will rise again. Now it's it's hard for us to understand the impact of those words to the first hearers, because we've heard them so many times, we've grown up with them after the fact, you know, we're week after Easter and so forth, and celebrating it. Uh, but what could those words have meant to them who had never experienced an Easter, who had never experienced this kind of reality? What was the meaning of what probably for them they thought was some kind of strange parable? Might not he be referring to the difficult days of some kind of messianic war that loomed ahead as he tried to establish the Davidic kingdom? Unsettling as Jesus' dire words must have been to them, the twelve at this point clearly refused to believe that Jesus is speaking literally. In Luke's version, Luke 18, verse 34, it says, The disciples understood none of these things, and the meaning of the statement was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said. Again, that may be hard for us to gather, but we need to take seriously what the gospels are telling us. And all four gospels repeat this point over and over again, that it's not until after the resurrection, the reality you live in after the resurrection, did they start really understanding things. They lived pre-resurrection, they lived pre-all of this stuff, and so it's mind-blowing for them, and so they aren't grasping it. They, the the literalness of it, it it's not, it can't be the case for them. All right, and so as they're on their way to Jerusalem, as Jesus has dropped this bombshell on them, uh, let's flip over to Matthew's gospel. It's the same, same kind of same, same journey, just different little bit of the conversation here. He's interrupted with a mother's request. Matthew chapter 20, verse 20. Let's read this together. Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached him with her sons and bowed down to him to request something from him. So the company stops outside. Here they're stopping outside of the city of Jericho. Salome, the wife of Zebedee from Beth Seda, was among those who were traveling with them. She's part of the entourage. All right, so all the disciples are not only with Jesus, but their families, their wife, their parents, their cousins, their aunts, their uncles. It's a large entourage. This is why Jerusalem, you know, overflows with people at Passover. She was one of the women who followed Jesus while he was in Galilee. Mark 15, verse 41, tells us this: that they used to follow him and minister to him, and there were many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. So she's one of the particular women who supported Jesus' ministry. She had joined her sons, James and John, for the Passover pilgrimage. Salome knew the preferential treatment that her sons had been receiving from the good rabbi from Nazareth, because together with Simon Peter, her sons formed kind of the close companions of Jesus, right? Jesus not only has 12 disciples, but within that 12, he has the inner three: Peter, James, and John. And so two of the closest three disciples are her sons. And so she decides to look out for her son's best interest and petition Jesus on their behalf. She was concerned for their position in his administration. This is revealing where their thinking is. Again, showing that they are not understanding, they are not comprehending what Jesus is really telling them and what his mission is really all about. They're still kind of caught up in the idea that Jesus is going to be a king in the way most people think of kings. And so as a king, he's going to have, or as an earthly ruler, he's going to, when he comes into power, he's going to establish his own cabinet, if you will, his own administration. And so he is going to, you know, pick people who are going to be, you know, his vice president, his secretary of war, and all of those kind of positions. And so she's kind of vying that her two sons would have a high-ranking position in the new kingdom's administration. And so she thinks it's better to bring the topic up now before they arrive in Jerusalem and Jesus takes up his glorious throne. So in her mind, this is clearly revealing what she's thinking as they're going to Jerusalem. She clearly thinks this is no ordinary trip to Jerusalem. She clearly realizes this is different. She clearly understands and senses what everybody else is sensing, but her expectation is, again, that it's going to be some kind of seizing of power, some kind of overthrowing of Rome, and some kind of centralization of Jerusalem under the authority of Jesus' reign. And so she approaches Jesus with her sons in tow, and she respectfully bows before him and asks permission to make a request. And so Jesus says, Well, what do you want me to do for you? And she says to him in Matthew 20 and verse 21, Command that in your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right and one on your left. The request may have been in reference to the twelve thrones that Jesus has already talked about. Matthew 19, verse 28, Jesus kind of giving this vision that under him there is going to be this new Israel. And kind of thinking of the 12 tribes of Israel. He's got these 12 followers, these 12 apostles, and that these 12 apostles along with him are going to have these positions of authority. And so she's thinking probably something in line with that. And so she asks that her sons might be placed on either side of the throne of David. That is, that they would have the highest ranking positions of power. And the request may have been in reference also to the seating arrangement at the messianic banquet, where the righteous of Israel recline at the table of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the Messiah himself. So let's see what Jesus' response is. We'll flip back over to Mark's gospel. Mark chapter 10, verses 38 and 39. Let's read this together. And Jesus said to them, You do not know what you have asked. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized in the baptism with which I am baptized? They said to him, We are able. They're able to drink from his cup. In other words, are they able to handle this? And they answer in the affirmative, but the cup they imagined was the inaugural cup of a victorious Messiah that he would use to pronounce the blessings at the banquet of his kingdom. So they envisioned a Messiah at some great inauguration banquet where he would take a cup and he would bless the cup at his inauguration and that they would be participating in that. They did not foresee a cup of the humble satyr in Jerusalem that would inaugurate his suffering. And so he asked them if they were able to undergo the immersion, the baptism into which he was to be baptized. And they answered into the affirmative, but the immersion they imagined was again more akin to the victorious crossing of the Red Sea than the suffering and martyrdom that Jesus foresaw. So when they heard, are you able to undergo this baptism? Are you able to go through this water, right? They again thought of things like, oh, redemption. He's talking like, man, we're going to have another Red Sea moment. He's going to do some kind of great thing like Moses because the final Redeemer, the Messiah, will be like the first Redeemer. And so just as Moses parted the Red Sea and brought the people out of their bondage from the Egyptians, Jesus must be planning on doing something great like that. Yeah, we'll be part of that. We most certainly can be part of anything like that. And so James and John, these the sons of thunder, as Jesus had declared them, said, yeah, we're able. And Jesus no doubt would have studied their faces and the faces of their mother. And he peered prophetically into the future. And he saw that James and John, that they would drink from this cup, that they would drink from the cup of suffering, that they would be baptized into the waters of martyrdom, that just as Jesus was martyred, so too would James and John. James was the very first martyr, and John was the last of the twelve to be martyred. James tasted the cup of martyrdom before any of the others. He was beheaded at the orders of Herod Agrippa, as recorded in the book of Acts. And John outlived all of Jesus' disciples. He was the last of the generation to die. According to legend, John endured imprisonment. He endured the attempted poisoning, a horde dip into a vat of hot oil, and finally his exile on the penal island of Patmos, where he pinned the book of Revelation. As images of those future events flickered past the eyes of Jesus, he told the brothers with prophetic certainty in verse 39, The cup that I drink, you shall drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. Again, they had no idea what Jesus meant. We know what he meant. We know that Jesus was prophetically telling them, You are going to suffer much the same way that I did. And as for the stations on his right and his left, Jesus said he could make no promise or prediction. He says in verse 40, This is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. And here, of course, is an allusion to the cross. Because you see, who is going to be at Jesus' right and his left when the Gospel of John always uses the image of Jesus on the cross as being lifted up. It uses the throne imagery of Jesus being lifted up in glory. It uses that description, lifted up in glory so that all will see and all will be drawn to him. He'll even be crowned with a crown, right? When he's lifted up in glory, and when he's crowned with the crown, there will be people, one on his right and one on his left. But Jesus says, you know, that's already been determined, right? And of course it isn't James and John, but it's going to end up being two criminals. Okay, and so we're seeing a little bit, because we have the benefit of knowing the rest of the story, but imagine you don't know the rest of the story. How mysterious Jesus' words would have sounded. How much you would have been in the dark as well. Like, who's going to be at my right and who at my left? It's already been determined. You wouldn't know what that means. We know what that means, but you would have no clue. Or, oh yeah, you're going to drink from the same cup I'm going to drink from. Well, you know James was martyred and beheaded by Herod Agrippa, and you know that John was the last of his generation to die. They didn't know that, right? So again, the whole mystery of as they're going into Jerusalem, just be sympathetic to the disciples. Do not fall for the trap that so many Christians do and so many preachers do, that these disciples are dumb, that they're stupid, that they don't get it, that they don't understand. Well, you have the you have the cheat code, you have the answers to the exam. They didn't, all right? Um, and so always keep that in mind. Let's keep reading in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 44 and 45. Let's read this together. For the one who desires to be great among you is to be as a servant to you, and the one who desires to be the head among you is to be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come so that others would serve him, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom in place of many. So this conversation between Jesus and Salome, the mother of John and James, and John and James themselves, no doubt this conversation was overheard. And word passed among the other ten disciples about how James and John had tried to preempt them. And so the rest of the twelve were a little bit upset. And the old argument about seating arrangements and prestige in the kingdom sparked into flame once again. And Jesus could hear the muttering and the angry whispers. As they drew near the limits of Jericho, he caused the twelve around him in a huddle. And so it's a discipleship moment. It's a teaching moment for Jesus and his disciples. And speaking in a tone of confidentiality, he says to them, You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles, they lord it over them. And their great men exercise authority over them, he says in Mark 10, verse 42. And near the road stood the winter palace of King Herod, right there on the outskirts of Jericho. It's a magnificent monument to the power, the authority, as well as the abuse and the brutality of the Gentile rulers that Jesus was talking about. He was saying, again, he was letting geography be the lesson. They're outside of Jericho, they're looking at this palace that Herod has built for himself, and he's saying, I want you to look at how the world views power. And I want you to look at how the world views prestige. World rulers are concerned about their ranking, and world rulers are concerned about where they sit at a table, and world rulers are concerned about making sure everybody else sees them as being the biggest and the baddest around, and they lord their power over others. That's how the world does things. So Jesus is trying to establish for them, again, that his kingdom is not of this world. He's trying to establish a different mentality. Because right now their mentality is like the rest of the world. That's why they have an expectation of who he is as Messiah. It's what the world would expect a hero to be. For them, a Messiah is nothing more than the Jewish hero. That's all they want. They want a Jewish hero. And he's saying, I'm not a Jewish hero like that, right? I'm coming to be a savior of the world. And that's different. That's different. This palace of Herod that they would have been walking past, it achieved notoriety as the place where Herod had once had the high priest of the temple drowned in his swimming pool. And the place where he attempted to have great the other great men of Israel killed on the occasion of his death so that tears would be shed. You see, when Herod knew that when he died, he knew he was so hated that not only would nobody cry, that people would celebrate. Now, can you imagine being that self-aware of who you are? That when you die, you know that not a single person, including your family, is going to shed a single tear, but they're going to party? And so to make sure that there were tears shed on the day he died, he tried to arrange a massacre of all the important people in the Jewish world so that at least tears would be shed. And so Jesus is saying these words with that as the background. Again, geography becomes the powerful lesson. Jesus had no need to recount the atrocities that his people had suffered at the hands of the rulers of the world and the so-called great men who exercised authority over them. In its greenery, wealth and splendor, patrolled by its armed soldiers, coveted by queens, frequented by the Herodians and Roman noblemen and foreign politicians, the Jericho Palace symbolized sheer political power and corruption. And so Jesus draws the twelve tightly around him and he sharply says, It's not this way among you. He would not have his disciples become lords and leaders, using positions of authority to abuse one another and others. Instead, he says in verses 43 through 45, Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And so he says, Things are different in my kingdom. The so-called great people will be known because they serve. Right? And the ones that are first, they're going to be known as being first because they're always last. And I know that's certain traditions and certain parts of our armed forces where the officers will not eat first. They will eat last. They will let those that are technically under them, they will let them eat first, they will let them eat to their full, they will make sure they get all the good stuff first, that it's hot, that it's the best, that it's the fresh off the grill, they will eat to their full. And then they, as officers who could, they could be the ones that have their own private dining hall and their own private chef and have their own private food, they will eat what's left over. But the reason they do that is to show that those who are going to be under them, that they are willing to serve them. And that so they will be last. That's the kind of mentality Jesus is expressing in his kingdom. So he's trying to prepare them for this different mentality that's going to be coming their way. Now let's flip over to the gospel of Luke chapter 19. Luke chapter 19. Verse 1. Let's read these three words together. He entered Jericho. So Jesus, his disciples, and their entourage of followers, making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the great festival of Passover. They came, as would have been the normal course of affairs, you know, that's the way on the interstate. They came to Jericho, where they could lodge before completing their journey to Jerusalem the next day. The city of Jericho sat in the Rift Valley, back from the western banks of the Jordan River near the limestone cliffs. It marked the eastern edge of the wilderness. It was some 10 miles north of the Dead Sea and 15 miles east northeast of Jerusalem. So you're getting a little north of the Dead Sea and a little east of Jerusalem. Historians and archaeologists believe that Jericho is the oldest continuous inhabited city in the world. And that's actually a fascinating story, a fascinating fact. It's not necessarily the oldest city in the world. You can find older cities that have once been inhabited, but notice it's the oldest, continuously inhabited city. It's still inhabited, and it's always been inhabited. It's the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Archaeologists have found evidence of occupation in Jericho as far back as 8,000 BC, which is about 6,000 years before Abraham. Copious and abundant springs break out of an otherwise inhospitable, dry wilderness. So basically, where you're at in Jericho is you're in the desert. It's called the wilderness, but in the Bible, when you hear the word wilderness, you need to think desert. And it's right on the edge, and so it's an oasis. It's one of the places in the desert where there's springs. And so even today, that's a modern picture of Jericho today. You see the desert around it, right? All that brown. It stays that brown all year round. But then boom, right? Jericho from ancient times, three, four thousand years ago, was called the city of palms. Now you know why. It's always had palm trees. Always. It's a green oasis in the midst of an otherwise barren, brown, dead desert. But it itself is a place of rich, abundant agriculture, which is why it's been the oldest continuous inhabited city, right? It's a place you can live. Where did you build cities in the ancient world before there was plumbing and all of this modern technology? You built it where there was water. You built it where you could grow food. You built it where you could water your crops and drink, right? That's Jericho. Situated on an important east-west route through the land, it connected the Mediterranean with the Transjordan. So it was on a very important east-west trade route with the Mediterranean Sea. It also enjoyed a constant stream of traffic and trade. During the days of the Persian Empire, the Persians used Jericho as its administrative center. And in the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great made Jericho this place his private estate. The Maccabees took Jericho from the Seleucids, and the Maccabean king Alexander put a royal residence there. The Roman general Pompeii took Jericho for Rome. And in the generation before Jesus, Mark Antony gave Jericho to none other than Cleopatra as a gift. Herod the Great then leased it from the Egyptian queen until her suicide, after which Augustus granted Herod sovereignty over the city. Herod then expanded and enhanced the city with official buildings and public works. And here in modern-day Jericho, you can still find the remains of a lot of the Herodian building projects, including his palace. And he strategically commanded the east entrance into the Judean region. Herod built a fortress there, a lavish palace for himself, a hippodrome, a theater. It was just this, again, lavish place. He even had freshwater swimming pool in the middle of the desert. It was an oasis. It became his favorite winter resort. In addition to a wide variety of agricultural products, it produced and exported balsam. There's your balsam tree there in Jericho. The sap could be made into expensive perfume. And Josephus describes the lush of Jericho in these words. And this is a quote from Josephus, who would have seen Jericho in the first century at the time Jesus and the apostles and so forth were making their way through it. And this is how he describes it. It contains a wide variety of palm trees that are watered by the spring, different from each other in taste and name, the better sorted them, and when they are pressed, they yield excellent honey, not much inferior in sweetness to other honey. This country does not produce honey from bees. Israel, a land of milk and honey, is not honey from the bee, it's honey from those palm trees. It also bears balsam, the most precious of all the fruits in that place. Cypress trees and trees that bear Myrobium. It would not be a mistake to declare this place as divine, and that it contains so much abundance. It so has so many rare and excellent trees. Indeed, if we speak of other fruits that grow here, it will not be easy to find any climate in all of earth that compares to Jericho. Whatever is sown here comes up in clusters because of the weather. The heat calls forth the sprouts and causes them to spread. The water makes each one of them take firm root and supplies the vitality of the vegetation. The weather is also of such good temperature that the people of the area dress only in linen, even if the snow should cover the rest of Judea. In other words, Josephus thinks it's paradise, right? Heaven on earth. And so they make their way to this place, this luxurious place. And Jesus, as they passed Herod's palace, has given them this great lesson on don't vie for authority, don't vie for being at my right or my left. That's not what my kingdom is about. That's not what my disciples are about. And then they enter into Jericho. Let's read these verses together from Luke 19. He entered Jericho and was passing through it. There was a man named Zacchaeus who was one of the leading tax collectors, and he was rich. So a short Jewish man by the name of Zacchaeus occupied the lucrative post of chief tax collector for the city of Jericho. Zacchaeus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Zacchai, which means innocent. And now Zacchaeus was far from innocent. As a prominent tax collector in Jericho, he would have worked directly for the Roman government. He would have squeezed the citizens to pay their public duties. And as head of the local tax collection, Zacchaeus the publican stood at the top of the pyramid scheme of extortion and corruption. So notice how Zacchaeus comes. Everybody knows the story of Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he, and so forth. But notice he comes on the end of the story about greatness. Right? This is going to be the living example of that story. Because from a worldly standard, Zacchaeus is great. If he doesn't like you, he can have you arrested. If he likes you, he can pull benefits for you and do great things for you. He lives in a big house. Thing you need most. Right? And so Jesus, as his disciples were arguing about power and position, takes him into the city that oozes power and position. And now there's this man, one of their own, who's full of power and position. And Jesus is going to use him as an example for his disciples. Zacchaeus would have profited from everything from levying tariffs on trade and exports all the way not only in Jericho but throughout Judea and the area of Perea. He would have collected taxes from the government and he would have set his own salary. He would have been able to set his own salary because basically Rome would have said, We need X dollars from you. And whatever he collected over what Rome said was his to keep. He determined that. And he had the full backing of Roman soldiers to collect that. That is the definition of power. Now earlier on this same day, Jesus had declared, if you may recall, how hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Tax collecting was a nasty business of cheating and stealing, and if any poor soul did not pay his taxes, the tax collector had the authority to have that person jailed until they did. And so the Jewish people of Judea would have considered Zacchaeus a traitor. They would have considered him a thief. In fact, the Mishnah places tax collectors in the same category as thieves and bandits. And in fact, Jewish law at the time of Jesus actually said it's okay that it's not a sin to lie to a tax collector because the tax collector's already lying to you, and the tax collector's already trying to harm you, and so you are not doing anything wrong by lying to them back. Now, I'm not saying that's true. I'm just letting you know that was what was the Jewish point of view at Jesus' time. And so there are many cases in the Talmud that talk about this. Avoiding a tax collector was regarded as a mitzvah from the Talmud. When a man enters a town and is accosted by a tax collector, it is as if he is being attacked by a bear. The sages disqualified tax collectors from serving as witnesses in a court of law. And they were basically described as dishonest people. And so anything they said was suspect. And the Gospels themselves reflect this because you have that common phrase in the Gospels sinners and tax collectors, right? They go hand in hand. And so with that, we'll end it here. We'll pick it up next week as Jesus and his disciples enter into Jericho and they encounter this man named Zacchaeus, who is the epitome of everything that James and John and the other ten were arguing to become in Jesus' economy and kingdom. And we'll see where that takes them.