Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. I hope stuff is going awesome for you, by the way. One of the unfortunate things about this arrangement that we have together is that it's very lopsided. I just sit here in my shed. I'll read the Bible. Then I talk into a microphone and then Jeff edits it up and puts some cool music at the end and sends it to you. And for most of us, that is all of our interaction. By the way, how about Jeff's music last week? That guy's on fire. Holy, holy, holy mashed up with Hold the Line by Toto. That was ridiculous. The Elvis thing he did. He's just a very talented man. He makes it a lot of fun. Back to the point. It's just it's very lopsided. And I don't like that about it because I like to talk with people about the Bible. I like people in general. But you know, it's the nature of the medium. We all know what we were signing up for. Still, I know we don't talk much, like in terms of sitting down face to face, but I think about you a lot. And I hope stuff is going great. Where I'm at right now is that the weather is turning and things are getting beautiful outside. And I I have a book that's about to come out in what are we at now? Nine days as I'm recording this. I don't know what happens when your book comes out. I wrote one a while back, but it was with a small publisher and kind of nothing happened when it came out. So I'm really interested to see what happens this time around. My wife's doing great. We're doing great. Church is great. Really, there's not much to complain about. I hope things are great for you too. Well, maybe there's one thing to complain about. We always have that one thing. If you like sports, no doubt one of your teams is performing badly right now. And that's kind of fun complaining. It's not like real complaining, it's just, you know, sports complaining. And one of the main types of sports complaining is yearning for better days when your team was better at stuff. So maybe you had a legendary coach back then, or some great superstar who led your team to the sports championship promised land, but now your team stinks. And what does everybody do? They sit around and say, you know, I wish that player would come back out of retirement, or I wish that coach would come back, or if they're too old to do it, you'd be like, you know, everybody's like, well, I we need a new version of that guy to come back. Somebody who's got those kind of chops and those kind of skills to get us back to where we need to be to restore the glory of this once proud program, this once proud franchise. Well, likewise, it seems like that's what we're getting with Elijah, of all people in the Bible. Now, there were a lot of fantastic people in the Old Testament. I've argued that Moses is kind of the main rock star, superstar of the Old Testament. I mean, David is pretty fantastic as well. Solomon's wealth, his era was pretty impressive. Abraham, he's a pretty big deal. There's some prophets like Isaiah, they're a pretty big deal. But Elijah, of all guys, seems to be the one that had captured the imagination of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus. Now, as we discussed last time around, it makes sense that they would yearn for the glory days of the program when we had Elijah around. Like that guy knew how to win. Elijah, he was clutch, he had ice in his veins, he knew what to do. We gotta get Elijah out of retirement. It makes sense if people felt like that, because there's actually a verse at the very end of the Old Testament that makes it sound like Elijah is gonna come back and do just that, restore things to their former glory to some extent. Final verses of the Old Testament. Here they are again, Malachi 4, starting in verse 5. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, or else I will come and strike the land with a curse. Like that last line, that's got some grit to it. So, yeah, it makes sense then that people in first century Judea and Galilee would be like, we're keeping an eye out for Elijah. It makes sense that they would think, okay, well, Elijah is somehow connected to, maybe part and parcel with the Messiah. And with that in mind, it makes infinite sense that in John chapter one, the religious leadership, some priests and Levites, would go out to the desert where John the Baptist is baptizing and say, I this kind of has some messianic undertones. What's going on out here? And question number one, they ask John the Baptist, as you know, as we read yesterday, is Are you the Christ? And he says, I am not the Christ. Then in John 1.21, they asked him, Then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. These religious leaders are smart and they're going right down the line, they're asking the right questions. Well, that is not the end of the matter. And it kind of sounds like John is saying, no, that's it. But clearly what John is saying is, I am not the reincarnation or the reanimation of Elijah. I am not possessed by Elijah's soul or whatever. I'm not literally Elijah. But a closer look at the New Testament indicates that he is that Elijah that was to come, predicted at the end of the Old Testament. He is in this prophetic role that mirrors or echoes the stuff that goes along with Elijah. Well, then we get some other speculation about people who might be Elijah returned at other parts of the New Testament. And this is mostly attached to Jesus in the ultra-famous passage in Matthew 16, where Jesus directly asks his followers, Who am I? Who do you think I am? Elijah comes up, Matthew 16, starting in verse 13. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Isn't that interesting? John the Baptist had been dead at this point for a while, maybe a year, maybe going on two years at this point in Matthew 16. And already people are looking at stuff that Jesus is doing, and they're saying, well, maybe that's John the Baptist back from the dead. Then other people are like, well, we know John the Baptist wasn't Elijah, but he kind of looked like Elijah and he pointed to Jesus. Maybe Jesus is Elijah. And then people were thinking Jeremiah as well. And then of course it goes on, Matthew 16, 15, but what about you? He asked. Who do you say I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And there are other references to that. Mark 6 has people wondering if Jesus might be Elijah. Mark 8 has people again wondering it specifically if Jesus is Elijah back from the beyond. I can't say back from the grave because he didn't die. In Luke 9, we get stuff about Elijah reappearing. People are wondering or guessing about this. So across the Gospels, Elijah keeps coming up. First he's associated with John the Baptist. Now he's being associated with Jesus. Maybe people are like, well, think about it. Have you ever seen Elijah and Jesus in the same room at the same time? Hmm. Well, then you turn the page one page from Matthew 16 to Matthew 17. And now Jesus and Elijah are in the same room at the same time. Matthew 17, Elijah doesn't just come up here, Elijah shows up here. After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, the brothers of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it's good for us to be here if you wish. We'll put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. And I says, while he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell face down on the ground and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. Get up, he said, don't be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. So you have this shocking scene here in Matthew 17 that really puts to bed all the questions about the identity of Elijah and Jesus and John the Baptist. And straight up, one of the functions of the account of the transfiguration in the Bible, to get a glimpse of the glory of Jesus as God in this world. But I think it was also there to address some big-time first century questions that existed, particularly among the Jewish audience. Remember, Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. And those questions were about Elijah. We got to know where Elijah fits. The same way Star Wars fans are always like, where do the skywalkers fit? Where does how is Ray? Is Ray a Skywalker? What's you got to tell us more about the Skywalkers? How do what's the genealogy? How does it all fit together? Who represents the same way people ask and obsess about you know this one key character in various types of storytelling? So people were clearly really invested in Elijah. They got teased at the end of the Old Testament. They want to know, well, what's the payoff to that little bit of optimism that you teased there? You gave us the impression the franchise was going to get back on its feet when Elijah came back. We want that. Who is it? It's not John the Baptist, it's not Jesus. So Elijah literally is just still Elijah? Is that what we're to understand? Well, Jesus clarifies that as we press further into Matthew 17, for our benefit as modern readers, but I think very much so also for the benefit of the readers who were in the original audience at a time when people kind of had Elijah fever. Matthew 17, 9. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, Don't tell anyone what you've seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. The disciples asked him, Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first? Okay, well, I mean the teachers of the law were doing a pretty good job here then. They're looking at the end of Malachi, the end of the Old Testament, and they're like, No, there is an order of operations here. We believe God, we trust these prophecies, and the prophet said there's supposed to be an Elijah who turns the heart of the children back to their fathers, and they don't want to screw it up because the last thing is like, or else I'll bring a curse, and we don't want that again. So the teachers of the law, God bless them, they're trying. And Jesus' disciples know they're trying, and the teachers of the law, I mean, they're right. Elijah must come first before the Messiah. Well, Jesus speaks to it. Matthew 17, 11, Jesus replied, To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things, but I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they didn't recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way, the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist. Jesus' point is those religious leaders who you guys are trusting, uh, they tend to miss on things. The new Elijah did come. It was John the Baptist. They were awful to him. The Messiah has also come, and they're going to do the same thing to the Messiah that they did to the new Elijah, who is John the Baptist. Now, maybe at this point you're like, wow, but yeah, but in that passage, the disciples are kind of just reading between the lines, and they're like, oh, okay, well, he must be talking about John the Baptist. And maybe that's not actually what Jesus was trying to say. But in Matthew 11 and verse 14, Jesus has a whole thing about John the Baptist. I mean, chapter 11 is very John the Baptist heavy, and Jesus says very nice things about John the Baptist. And particularly here in verse 14, he says, Well, I'm going to start in verse 13, for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears, let him hear. There's more stuff in the Gospels and in the New Testament that speaks to the identity question of Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. But the two things I just gave you in Matthew 11 and Matthew 17, those are, as I like to call it, smoking gun. There isn't a lot more interpreting we need to do here. If you find Jesus to be trustworthy and the Bible to be trustworthy, then the matter is closed. It's been spoken to. So in John 1, the religious leaders come and they say, Are you Elijah? I think John the Baptist rightly interprets their meaning as being literal and he says, No. But Jesus makes it very clear that in terms of fulfilling the role and fulfilling the prophecy, John the Baptist, who is a completely separate individual from Old Testament Elijah, John the Baptist is that Elijah who was to come, who was predicted at the end of the Old Testament in Malachi. Next time around, we'll see how the rest of this interplay between the religious leaders and John the Baptist goes down in John chapter 1. I'm Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.