Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And yesterday, we were talking about these two big assumptions that the Jewish part of John's audience would have had coming into encountering his gospel. Stuff that they would have been rock solid on, stuff they really would have believed firmly as they are starting to encounter the story of Jesus. Thing number one, Moses is the goat. Not like how they used to say goat, like the scapegoat, but like the modern use of the term goat, greatest of all time. He's greatest. Moses is the best. Abraham, we talked about yesterday, you know, he was pretty great, but he didn't give the law. A couple people mentioned to me that, you know, maybe David would have been a candidate for the goat. Yeah, David was the goat in terms of, you know, the era of the kings, and he wrote you wonderful psalms, but he didn't give the law. It's not David. Elijah is maybe the greatest prophet ever, but he also didn't give us the law. No, Moses. Moses is the man. He wrote down the Torah, the Pentateuch, first five books of the Old Testament. He went and met with God, got close enough to God that the glory of God was like on him. He's the one who God spoke with candidly and revealed all of the law. And the law is kind of the centerpiece of first century Judaism. This is, you know, if we keep the law, we can have the blessing of God. We can have right standing with God. Maybe God will even dwell among us if we keep the law hard enough. So their hero is going to be Moses. So that's assumption number one. Moses is the goat. Assumption number two is that idolatry is bad. We're only going to worship one God. And God alone. We're not going to do idols, we're not going to do any of that nonsense. We only worship one God. So these are both actually really good assumptions. And let me just recenter the conversation here. When you read through the gospels, the religious leaders who hold these positions, they are the bad guys. They're the ones who miss the point with Jesus. Now, look, if I'd been there, it's really fun to imagine. I would have been like, oh, I have eyes to see, and I just know the Bible so well that I would have known to follow Jesus. But no, statistically, I would have been way more likely to follow the religious leaders and be like, yeah, this guy, what the heck? We already have a religion. We have Moses. We have the law. People are saying he's God in the flesh. That's idolatry. We only worship one. I probably would have been wrong. So look, you read through the Gospels, and correctly, we assess the religious leaders as being the bad guys who were missing the point. But also, we want to be adults here. And you know something that adults can do? They can give credit where it's due. They can look at somebody from the other team and be like, well, that was still a dang nice shot. They can look at a call that goes in favor of their own team and say, Yeah, that was still a bad call. I mean, it's going to help us, but that was a bad call. You got to have, you know, honesty when you evaluate this stuff. And honestly, good job, Jewish leadership. Yeah, Moses was pretty cool. Yeah, the law was from God. It's it's good. There's nothing wrong with the law. There's something wrong with us and our ability to keep it, but the law is great. It does exactly what it was supposed to do. It revealed the character of God, it revealed human sinfulness, it reveals our own inability to save ourselves, it reveals great standards for how to live and do society. It sets up the sacrificial system, which points right to Jesus. So great. You know, the law, it's pretty tough. Paul likens it to a strict tutor, like a harsh school marm. But dang, it's pretty good. God did a great job on the law, and it looks like Moses did a great job of relaying what God did a great job of to the people. So hey, high five religious leaders in the Bible. Good job. Liking Moses, appreciating that the law is from God and it is good, and nice job rejecting idolatry. That is wonderful. However, this put a bit of a hurdle in place. Their zeal for these things overshadowed, it looks like, their ability to see the point of the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament, to see the point of God's redemptive plan. These obsessions they took over and they seem to have clouded out the ability to remember that this is all going somewhere. God is going to redeem everything. There's a Messiah who is on his way. The law is not the eternal status quo. The law is pointing toward something, and ultimately God is going to dwell with us again. I mean, that that's what was predicted in the Old Testament. So John opens up his gospel here, basically saying, like, you know, look, Jesus is not idolatry. Jesus is God with us. Jesus is what the Old Testament points to. Jesus is kind of the completion of the second commandment about, you know, not worshiping fake gods. Well, here's the actual God right in front of you. And on the back end of this prologue, here in John chapter one, Moses also comes into view. And John is saying, like, Jesus is the completion of Moses. He's better than Moses. You don't have to reject Moses as the goat of the Old Testament, goat in the good way, greatest of all time, in order to embrace Jesus. He's trying to knock down these two objections. This is how the end of the prologue goes. John 1, verse 15. John the Baptist testifies concerning him, Jesus. He cries out, saying, This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. From the fullness of his grace, we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now maybe at this point you're thinking, why didn't John and Paul and Peter and Matthew, I don't know, like just all of them get together instead of writing the gospel of John and just go to Jerusalem and talk to these guys calmly and be like, hey, you know, stuff settled down a little bit now. Let's uh, you know, let me just lay out for you why and how Jesus is the completion of the Old Testament and how his arrival in the temple is actually what you were looking for all along. And the reason they couldn't have that conversation is because everybody but John was dead, dead from persecution. So that kind of gives you a sense of how it's gone with both the Jewish leadership and with Rome when people show up and try to make this case. Stephen tried to make this case in Acts chapter 7. It's beautiful. He gives this whole layout of how Jesus is the completion of the whole story that you guys love from the Old Testament. But then at the end of the story, everybody freaks out and they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. We gnash our teeth. But Stephen, he's not flustered at all. This is Acts 7, 55. He's full of the Holy Spirit, and he looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he says, Look, he said, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices. They all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city, and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Oh, yeah, that's right. Paul was there. He used to go by Saul, and he actually approved of that before he flipped sides and became a part of Team Jesus. And of course, when Saul, Paul, then went and taught the same thing Stephen did, hey, Jesus is the fulfillment of the he's the positive obedience to the second commandment. He is on, I mean Moses is on his team. Moses tests every time Paul went and tried to say what Stephen said, that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, uh, he got roughed up pretty bad as well. Finally, at the end of Acts, he has just a moment after a riot has already occurred in Jerusalem where he gets people to quiet down for a minute and gets permission from the commander. This is after he's been almost beaten to death already, just for standing there. And there's a giant mob, things are going crazy, the Romans step in, and then Paul's like, Hold on a minute. I can still sort of think straight. I've only been beaten a little bit. Let me stand up, paraphrases very much mine. And he says, Oh, can I say something? Let me speak to the people. And the commander's like, All right, man. And he gets up, and Paul in Acts 22 is like, brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense. And he's speaking in Aramaic, and they're all like, Oh, oh, okay, we'll listen. And Paul says, I'm a Jew, born of Tarsus of Cilicia, but I was brought up in this city under Gamaliel. So he references like one of their great, most revered leaders. And he tells the story how he converted, how Christ reached out to him and miraculously revealed himself to him. And he doesn't even make it to the end of his sermon. And they scream, rid the earth of him. He's not fit to live. And they're uh shouting and they're throwing their cloaks and they're flinging dust in the air. I mean, absolute chaos. And Paul gets arrested and taken away pretty much for his own safety. No. The reason that we can't just sit down and have a civilized conversation is that by the time the book of John is being written, this idea that John is advancing, once again, here in his gospel, has been met with violous violence every time it's come up. Why is that happening? Well, negatively, it's happening because the Jewish leadership are completely missing the point. And some people are close, they're taking their cues from the Jewish leadership and they're supporting the Jewish leadership. And they're even okay with abandoning their principles and risking the good relationship they currently have with Rome to indulge the religious leaders, their new impulse toward violence. I mean, the religious leaders are uh they're they're not allowed to just throw rocks at Stephen until he's dead, but they do it anyway. They're that passionate about not idolatry and don't diss Moses or the law. And yeah, they can't just do that alone as a leaders. They have to have followers. They have to have people who support them and lend their voice and are like, all right, well, I know everyone's very upset here, but they are our religious leaders and they they're they probably wouldn't hit people with rocks until they're dead if they didn't have a perfectly good reason. They had people enabling them, they had support. So even though the Gospel of John is written several decades after the events it describes, still we're writing to the same kind of audience. The only difference is that now John is writing to a people who've been humbled because the temple is gone and destroyed and the sacrificial system is wrecked. But again, none of those earlier voices are there to go with John and appeal peacefully to these people in Jerusalem. So instead, now it's like John is going to write to people who still hold these values. Moses is the best, the law is great, idolatry is bad, all good values. John is patiently taking another run at this thing now. Now, I think John is writing to more than just Jews here, but for the Jewish audience, this is kind of the last man standing from generation of one of Christianity. It's John. He's an old man at this point, but very patiently he's laying it out one more time. No, Jesus is the fulfillment of all of this stuff. You know what? Can we just do a little bit of a longer episode today? Because I really want to tell you about a couple of these anecdotes from extra biblical history. Why am I asking you? I can't hear your answer. I'm just gonna do it. The same people John is writing to here have demonstrated how violent and passionate they can get over what they perceive as opposing idolatry. Pontius Pilate was the guy who was in charge, you know, during the he was the Roman governor at the time that Jesus was crucified. And he was on very shaky footing politically. The guy who appointed him, his benefactor back in Rome, got executed for treason by the emperor Tiberius. So Pilate's like, uh, I don't really know what that means for me. I guess I'll just try to make sure the emperor is very happy. Uh, well, an ancient philosopher named Philo, who we've talked about a little bit, and the great ancient Jewish historian Josephus, according to both of these guys, Pilate's fallen all over himself, trying to make these ovations and gestures to show Tiberius how loyal he is and how much he has things under control and how much there's really no reason to make any change of governorship here. I've I've got it. And one of the things he does is he brings in a bunch of military standards, like, you know, uh flags like you have on sticks, and they probably had images of the Emperor Tiberius on there. And he brings in these effigies of Tiberius uh into the temple complex. He does it at night because he knows it maybe might not go over well. And the people, the Jewish leaders, freak out because Caesar, you know, he claimed to be a god, you know, a god taken on flesh. Ooh, well, they're very sensitive about that. And so, yeah, they melt down about it and respond with threats of violence. And eventually they go up to Pilate's palace, and Pilate's like, you guys quit with the protesting or I'll kill you. And they're like, they pull down their robes and they're like, Here's our necks. We'd rather die than do idolatry. And they do this mass protest, all bearing their necks until Pilate, who's like, I want to make Tiberius like me, but also Tiberius really hates rebellions. I guess I'll back down. So he backs down. And there's uh another story that gets told about uh a bunch of golden shields that apparently also had the image of Tiberius on it. And the same exact thing happens. The Jewish leadership finds out and they freak out. Here's how the story goes This proceeding, that is, the introduction of the golden shields, created a very great agitation among the Jews when it became known, for they considered that by it the laws were violated because it was not lawful for any images to be set up in the city, nor any symbols of idolatry. Accordingly, the principal men among them, the sons of Herod and others of great influence, and the magistrates of the city and the chief men of the nation, went in a body to Pilate and besought him to remove the shields all the way out of Jerusalem and not to violate the customs of their country, which had hitherto been preserved and viable by all who had been sent as governors of Judea. But when he refused this request, they cried out the louder, saying they would appeal to Caesar and would not endure to have the laws of their country transgressed. And Pilate, being somewhat afraid that they might in reality send an embassy to Tiberius and accuse him of corruptions and acts of insolence, he backs down and removes the shields. In addition to the examples in the Bible, we've got extra-biblical examples in great detail as well from this exact same era that really characterize how much of a powder keg the Jewish leadership and their most ardent religious political supporters were when it came to questions about messing with the temple, messing with Moses, messing with the law, or anything that they took to count as idolatry. Now, maybe they were right here to say, no, the emperor holds himself out as a god, and we shouldn't be putting images of another god around the temple. I'm not even saying they're wrong. I am saying they're wrong to have thrown riots with Paul and murdered Stephen. What I am saying, though, for sure, in all of these situations is, again, let me use the phrase, powder keg. These religious leaders and their supporters are willing to engage in serious violence, even without the permission of Rome, to nuke anything that looks critical of the temple, Moses, the law, and most especially anything that looks like idolatry. The most charitable way that we could characterize these religious leaders and their most ardent followers' read on Jesus is that they looked at that and said, This is idolatry, and Jesus is opposed to Moses and the law. The most charitable read is they were just mistaken. They just didn't listen closely enough to Jesus. They just didn't know the scriptures well enough. And hey, even today, aren't the people who know the scriptures the least the most likely to be loud, angry, and even violent in support of their not that well-informed understanding of the scriptures? That was maybe a little mean because there's a lot of things I don't know about the scriptures too. All of that to say, hopefully over the last couple of days here, we've got a fuller sense of the situation and what John is speaking to here. And tomorrow we're going to reread the end of this John prologue here in John 1 and launch off of that into some other parts of the New Testament that also have New Testament authors inspired by the Holy Spirit trying to calm the jangled nerves of the religious leaders and their most loud, outspoken, violent followers to say, you don't have to punt on the Old Testament or Moses or the law. You don't have to like idolatry to like Jesus. Jesus is actually the fulfillment and the completion of all the things you guys are for. That is very spoken to in the New Testament, and we'll get a good sampling of that tomorrow. Thanks for indulging a little bit longer episode today. And also, quick thanks again. I saw that a handful of you signed up to support the program at patreon.com/slash the TmbH podcast. We're trying to send out something every single time somebody signs up now. I put together a little like welcome thing, a couple nice little like just little gift things that we can pop in the mail. And uh I think our little system's working. I think we're doing a pretty good job of getting everybody who gives us their address when they sign up to support uh a little welcome thing. Thank you to everybody who supports this show, to everybody who's just signed up to support this show. And as always, thank you to everybody who at some point supported this show. This is never the kind of thing where you sign up and you have to do it forever or it gets weird. Uh thank you to everybody who at any point in the history of this thing has helped make it go. I'm really grateful. All right, more tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.