Okay. Even if you know nothing about tennis or volleyball or sports in general, I still think this is probably gonna work. It's gonna make sense. I started playing tennis a few years back. It's a fun game. It's way, way, way harder than it looks. I mean, from the outside looking in, is like I thought it was the easiest sport. And I'd get to it when I'm older because of how easy it is whack the ball into the giant in area and wait for your opponent to screw up. I don't know. It looks slow. It looked easy. It's not that. It's much more difficult than I anticipated. And when I started playing tennis, one of the dumb things of many dumb things that I would do is when I would move up toward the net on an easy ball that's just floating there above the net, I'd run up and I'd do this karate ninja samurai slammy slam thing where I would try to mash the ball as hard as I could into the ground on my opponent's side of the net. That felt instinctively like what I needed to do. But here's the funny thing about tennis: you get a bounce in tennis. It's allowed to bounce once. If it bounces twice, you know, then you lose. But if it only bounces once on your side, you're still good. The point is still going. And so I would drill the ball, like, ya, ya, straight into the ground. And then it goes a mile into the air, and my opponent, while it's still floating around up there, would look at me like, why did you do that? And then they'd wait for the ball to come down and just put it away and take the point from me. And for the longest time, I'd scratch my head. I'm like, oh, why am I so bad at the net? And finally I had a friend tell me, dude, when you get to the net, you start reverting to volleyball. I played volleyball when I was in college. You act like a volleyball player again, because in volleyball, you only get no bounces. As soon as the ball hits the ground, you've won the point. And they're like, it's like you're trying to spike the ball or something. You're playing the wrong sport when you're up around the net. You got to stop that. You got to hit these other smarter shots in order to win at tennis. And this is the most obvious thing in the world. I mean, like two plus two is four, yellow and blue make green, unbelievably elementary stuff that a child could see, but I couldn't see it, and I kept making the same mistake. And what was a mistake? I was playing the wrong sport. I was doing something that under a completely different set of rules would have been very advisable and very smart. But under the set of rules of the thing we were actually doing was incredibly stupid and counterproductive. And maybe in my own little brain I thought it looked cool or something, but it didn't. It was dumb. Likewise, when we get to Act Three of the Story of the Life of Jesus, we've got a tension between two different parties here, Jesus and the religious leaders, who are playing by completely different ground rules. When they talk, when they come into tension and they have confrontations, it's like they're speaking different languages. It's like they're trying to achieve different things. Well, it's not like that. They are. The Pharisees, the religious leaders who we talked about yesterday, the intellectual descendants of some of the darker impulses that came out of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, they're trying to play a national salvation game. Well, just a little hint on the side of them getting rich and having a lot of power and maybe getting some special under-the-table treatment from some powerful government officials. But what they are, at least ostensibly, trying to do is make a religion that has so many rules and a legal system to it that is so developed that the people will never accidentally disobey God, and then God will bless the people and maybe restore their nation, restore the fate of their people, or something like that. So just in fairness, there were some people who were looking forward to what Jesus was going to be, but the Pharisees were not among them. They had their own set of ground rules, they're playing volleyball. Well, Jesus is playing tennis. Jesus is not in any way trying to set up some kind of political kingdom. He makes that abundantly clear. And this is disappointing to some in the first two acts of the story of the life of Jesus. He has opportunities to flex his muscles or rally people together, as a lot of other people who were making messianic claims at this time were wont to do, but Jesus passes on it at every turn. When his disciples suggest violence to make the kingdom thing happen, Jesus rebukes them. When his disciples pull out a sword eventually to try to fight, to kill people to make the Jesus thing happen, he rebukes that as well. At every moment he controls, he reigns in his massive authority and power. I mean, he could just open up the earth and swallow his enemies if he wanted to. He's demonstrated that kind of that level of power. But he doesn't do it. He's doing something that is meek, something that is controlled, something that is restrained, at least in terms of power. He's doing something that is antithetical to the values of the world, the systems of the world. He's living out the values of the kingdom of heaven, the values of the kingdom of God. Well, for some people, like the Pharisees, this makes no sense. Power is power. Whatever Jesus is doing is just disruptive to our attempts to get things back on track for our nation. So the Pharisees are like, how come you're not mashing the ball straight into the ground like we're doing? You're doing it wrong. But Jesus is playing a completely different game, and Jesus is right. And as a result, the behavior of the Pharisees seemed smart to them. They just weren't understanding the game that was actually being played, and therefore they were very threatened by Jesus. So what was Jesus going for? The attentive reader, when you get to Act Three of the Story of Jesus, is going to be really on edge because Jerusalem is where all the bad guys are. The bad guys have come out and harassed and harried Jesus and his followers in the first two acts of the story of Jesus, but now he's in their base. He's in their headquarters where they control everything. They know all the business owners, they know all the vendors and artisans, they know everybody who's selling anything to everybody, they got all the whispers, they got all of the connections with government, they got all the palms greased. They have total home court advantage. And it's pretty freaky at this point for the person who's reading the story of Jesus attentively to see him walk into this like you're gonna die. Well, that's exactly what he was going there to do. And again, if you're playing the game the Pharisees are playing, then dying would be how you lose. But if you're playing the game that Jesus is playing, well, then him dying, laying down his life, giving his life as a ransom for many is exactly how you win. Well, he's super well received when he shows up. People wave palm branches, they yell Hosanna, they call him the son of David, meaning that the crowd just kind of understood this could be the promised king who will reign on the throne of David forever, and they're pretty excited about it. The Pharisees are crazy mad about it, and they're telling Jesus, like, make them stop saying this stuff. And Jesus points them back to scripture and is like, I mean, the paraphrase here is like, well, if the shoe fits and if it's true. And so then the Pharisees and the religious leaders, they're like, All right, well, we're not gonna beat him by just making him submit and withdraw and play our game based on our ground rules. We're gonna have to shame him and point out that how he's playing the game and the game he's playing are all wrong. So they test him publicly with a bunch of questions, disputations, debates. But for anybody who's read through the first two acts of the story of Jesus, you just know there's no way this is gonna work. He's so much smarter than them. And of course, he obliterates their arguments. They all come away looking like fools. And yet, even after all of that, Jesus still goes to some of these leaders and proactively pleads the scriptures with them, trying to get them to see that they're playing the wrong game and that what Jesus is doing is actually the game they claim to be wanting to play. And maybe a couple of these religious leaders see it, but for the most part, nope, they're just angry and embarrassed and they double down on their plan for violence. Well, it's after this that Jesus goes absolutely scorched earth, where he calls them whitewashed tombs and broods of vipers, and he overtly says, everybody in the Old Testament, I mean, he makes a connection, everybody in the Old Testament who was getting it wrong, who persecuted the prophets of God, and everybody who killed the people who was getting it right, you are them. You are descended from them. And of course, the religious leaders they don't like that at all. And it's in that moment that Jesus' disciples are like, oh dang, we uh we did come here so he could die, because he's not coming back from that conversation right there. He just said the emperor had no clothes to the religious establishment, the people who effectively ruled Jerusalem, and they couldn't refute it. Indeed, the emperor did have no clothes, and Jesus was right. So then he withdraws with the disciples and he gives them a long explanation about, you know, a little bit about what's about to happen in the next 24, 48 hours, which is going to be his death, but more so about where this whole thing is going. And he paints this picture of the world systems doing what world systems do, politicians lying and taking bribes and wars and rumors of wars and all of this other stuff going on. But there is this long game that God is playing, Jesus is saying to them, and he's telling them and the people who they're gonna train up who come after them, the disciples. He's telling them, you gotta live like I could return tomorrow to put an end to all of this, but you also have to act like it's going to be a long time. Prep for the long haul, but be ready and alert and attentive because there is an unfolding of history that is happening here and that will happen over time. And you guys are gonna play a vital role in it. He tells them a bunch of parables to help lay that stuff out. And this really sets the foundation for what the commissioning is for all the people who follow Jesus after his death and resurrection that we're going to talk about right now. One of those 12 disciples has been a problem all along, and finally, his true colors are fully on display. This is Judas. He makes a deal with the religious leaders to sell out Jesus. And in this, Judas is an archetype, an all-time archetype for a traitor, a bad guy, a sellout, a betrayer of a friend, a turncloak. And so Jesus acknowledges that he knows this is coming, and Judas leaves, and then Jesus initiates the Lord's Supper, a rite, a sacrament of the Christian church that has existed ever since. This is a huge initiation, it's a huge moment in the history of the church as this gets put in place. Well, a little bit after that, Judas succeeds in selling Jesus out. He gets arrested, he goes through a kangaroo court trial that is a complete joke. None of the ridiculous charges thrown at him stick in any way. But ultimately it comes down to blasphemy. That's what they charge him with. Blasphemy. They think they got him when the high priest says, I charge you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you're the Christ, this is the Messiah, the Son of God. And Jesus says, Yes, it is as you say. Then the high priest tears his clothes. He's like, He's spoken blasphemy. And they're like, Yeah, we gotta kill the beast. And they haul him away, and Rome ultimately, you know, the occupiers, they're the ones who have the authority to execute somebody. And uh, Pilate, the Roman governor in charge, he seems conflicted about it, but ultimately he's a pretty weak leader. He's like, Okay, I don't know, I'll try to buy peace here, I'll kill this guy that the religious leaders, I guess, want me to kill. And so he does. He has Jesus executed on a cross, an execution that was reserved for insurrectionists, a style of execution that was meant to be maximum painful and make a maximum example of someone who is an enemy of the truest thing in the world, according to Rome, that being the authority of the state. But instead of that cross being a lingering image of the authority of world systems and the authority of the state, instead it's a lingering reminder of the grace of God, of Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh, who went to the cross, took on the sins of humanity, and gave himself as a ransom for many. Well, Jesus dies, a physical, earthly death with his physical earthly body. The death is very moving for the people who were there, and understandably confusing and challenging for Jesus' disciples, but just as Jesus predicted, he did not stay dead. His body is dressed for burial and wrapped up. I mean, he's dead dead. He's in the tomb for three days, but he comes back to life. Death is defeated. It's not just one or two people who see Jesus. He's around for a while, eating food, drinking beverages, being alive with his disciples, and he spends time with them, and he commissions his disciples, ultimately communicating to them that all authority has been given to Jesus, and it's their role to go and make disciples of all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And in the midst of all of that, the disciples are like, Well, are you gonna go and get revenge? Or is there gonna be a reckoning? Is now the time that you're gonna square accounts with everything that happened with the bad guys who did this to you, who were playing a different game than you? A little bit of paraphrasing there, but that's the gist of what they're driving at. And Jesus says, Yeah, it's not really up to you to know when it's gonna be time for me to do that. But in the meantime, you're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and out to the ends of the earth. And with that, he commissions what the age of the church is going to be. That is, that his followers will live in a here but not yet kind of sense of the kingdom of God, exhibiting the values of the kingdom of God, and passing along the message of Jesus, the exaltation of Jesus, and obedience to Jesus in this interim time that will last for an indeterminate amount of time until ultimately Jesus comes back and visually establishes the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, and reigns forever, as has been predicted all the way back into the Old Testament. And that's Act Three of the story of Jesus. The Pharisees, the enemies of Jesus, they were trying to mash the ball straight in the ground. They were like me, they're playing the wrong game on the wrong court, and they just weren't reading the situation very well. Maybe what they were doing would have made sense in the different game, but they're playing world kingdom games in something that should have been a kingdom kingdom game. Jesus is playing by Kingdom Kingdom ground rules while he's establishing the kingdom, the true kingdom. And as a result, Jesus comes out of this story looking like he makes a ton of sense and being really compelling. And his enemies, who thought they had won by putting him on a cross, come out of this looking horrible and like they've completely missed the point of everything. All right, for those of you who are new, this is a little bit longer than what we normally do today, but I wanted all of this act three of Jesus thing to happen in one conversation so that next time around we can cover the stuff that happened after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus up until the moment we're looking at here as we work through the book of Galatians. Now I know this was a lot, and if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, try not to be discouraged, try not to feel overwhelmed because we're gonna keep pulling on these threads, we're gonna pull these things together, and we're all gonna be on the same page and have a clear sense of how we went from the old testament stuff right up to the moment that the book of Galatians starts, after a couple more days of working through the backstory here. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.