JOHN132 - When I Say Jesus Was Trolling, I Mean That as a Compliment

John 2:18-22

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Music by Jeff Foote

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Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And the other day I off-handedly used a word, a verb, a slang term, to characterize what Jesus is kind of doing here in John 2 as he goes back and forth with the Jews who demanded of him a miraculous sign to prove that he had the authority to go around flipping over tables and purging the temple. And that term was trolling. I was just musing about is Jesus trolling these people? Would that be the right word? And that's kind of, you know, it's kind of a big deal. Troll sounds like a very harsh word, and I associated it with Jesus, and I'm very, very pro-Jesus. And I've been reflecting on that a bit. And I wanted, I wanted to follow up on it because I think it gets us into what we're talking about today really well. Okay, to troll, well, in the best sense of the word, to troll is to throw something out and see who kind of takes the conversational bait to expose the insincere, disingenuous thinkers. The more negative version of trolling would be just throwing something out, kind of rage baiting people to see who will take the bait and get mad and get people fighting just because you want to see the world burn. I certainly would not suggest that Jesus is doing the latter. I would suggest that the Apostle Paul maybe did that at least once. I think the Apostle Paul was trolling a little bit when he was talking to his old classmates and buddies toward the end of Acts when he was back in Jerusalem and talked about resurrection of the body in a room full of people who he knew totally disagreed about whether there was any resurrection of the body after death. And you kind of see Paul being like, just innocently, like, you know, like resurrection. You know, I know you guys think about that some. And he just kind of pulls the pin on the grenade and rolls it into the middle of the room. You can kind of just see him taking that in a little bit and playing on their own division. So I think Paul, at least once, has done a little bit more of the negative trolling in the Bible, but I don't think Jesus is doing that. I do think Jesus is incredibly savvy and good at reading the room, at knowing what's in people's hearts. Just yesterday we were looking at a thing in Matthew 9 where Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic on the mat, and the religious leaders who are there are like, well, you know, I don't like that. That's I don't like them. Forgive me, that's a bunch of bullpucky. I don't, that's ridiculous. And Jesus knows what's in their heart and what they're grumbling about. And so he heals the guy to be like, you know, which is harder to forgive sins or to do that. He just always knows. He always knows what to do. And so with that level of sophistication that we see from Jesus socially all the time, it's hard to believe that there isn't a little bit of trolling in the best sense of the word here. When the Jews demand of him a sign, you know, what miraculous sign can you show to prove your authority to do this? And Jesus gives them a sign, not in the way that they're wanting, like, do something right now, make a trick happen, like, you know, make something disappear, make something like, come on, do it. Like make it so that, like, uh, you know, like stab some lady in a box, but have her not get stabbed. Do something cool. And Jesus instead gives them something that's going to happen much later. Destroy this temple and I'll raise it again in three days. Well, he's trolling them here. I think it's an okay use of the word, because the people who don't have eyes to see or ears to hear what he's saying, they're not connecting the dots between the Old Testament and the prophets and Jesus and who he's already shaping up to be. They hear that and they're like, but this building, you mean this building? But the people who do understand or have a sense of what Jesus might be about, they seem like they just keep their mouths shut, don't expose themselves as partisan hacks who have, you know, strong leanings this way or that. They just shut their mouths and they wait, and then later it comes into focus for them. I mean, really, the text says it works out just exactly the way I'm describing. So Jesus says, Destroy the temple and I'll raise it again in three days. The Jews replied, It's taken 46 years to build this temple, and you're gonna raise it in three days. But the temple he'd spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he'd said, then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. So Jesus is savvy here, and John goes out of his way in the next two verses to be like, yeah, and he was right. Dear reader, you might have a gripe with this. You might be like, oh, that was kind of evasive on Jesus' part. Why use imagery that might confuse or trip people up? But John is like, Yeah, he was absolutely right to do it. The people who didn't want to get it didn't get it. The people who trusted Jesus and wanted to get it sat and thought, and they added it all up, and they were like, Oh, I get it now. Uh, John, all the gospel authors are certainly consistently very impressed with Jesus' ability to read the room and say exactly what he meant to say. So, trolling, though back to that, it sounds like incredibly mean just because you think of the mythical creature that lives under a bridge when you hear troll, the mythical creature that lives under bridges and it's got warts and weird, homunculous man disproportions. And some poor traveler comes across a bridge they need to pass, and behold, there is a troll. And the troll is like, I shall let you pass this bridge only after you answer these three super difficult, tricky riddles. And then the traveler maybe gets the first two right, but then the troll has an extra super tricky one for the first one, and the traveler answers, but he's wrong, because he got tricked, and the troll just bites him in half, top half of the torso, right down that hatch, and there's just a bloody stump with a couple legs left for you know, maybe save that for later. I do not think that's how Jesus is at all. I do not think he is like a mythical creature that bites people in half because he tricked them. I think the second definition of troll is something that Jesus does, and it is reflective of sophistication. The term that we have in our parlance, to troll, is not to mythical creature bite people in half and trick them under bridges. It is to, it's a fishing style. You got a lure, you put it behind a boat, the boat moves quickly. And the idea is we're going to show this lure to a lot of fish by just putting it behind the boat. We're not sight fishing, we're not like I do as a fly fisherman. I often look for fish, see what the fish is doing, observe that one fish's behavior, try to find a fly that matches the bugs that fish is eating. And then I try to carefully cast to that fish in such a way that it won't see my line. I manage my line so it doesn't get all curvy and move faster than the current, and I try to make it flow right into that fish's field of vision and trick it, and then I catch the fish. That's not what trolling is. Trolling is the exact opposite of that level of precision. You put a big ugly lure on a thing, you throw it behind the boat, you crank the boat up real fast so that that lure moves in a way that's kind of believable and will provoke fish. Maybe 500 fish are going to see that thing, but you only need one to bite to get the result. Then trolling is it's like throwing things out in front of a group in such a way you get the bite and you figure out exactly what it is that you're dealing with. Well, I do think Jesus employs techniques like that. And I do think Jesus refuses to answer questions that are disingenuous. He does that also in Jerusalem at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in 21, 22. Hang on, I knew this once. It is in 21, uh, verse 23. Jesus entered the temple courts, and while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. So these are very, this is not just the Jews, these are the most important people. The big hitters are out now, and this is what they ask. By what authority are you doing these things? They asked. And who gave you this authority? Look at that. Here we are at the end of the story. They're asking the same questions that they were asking at the beginning of the story. So, what's Jesus going to do? These people have very fancy outfits, they're very important. What they say goes, they're tremendously influential. I mean, they assigned Jesus work. Doesn't he have to do the work now? Well, no, because Jesus has a masterful habit of knowing where the people who are coming at him are coming from, and he tends to match the energy that you come at him with. Even if you're an outsider, like a few chapters earlier in Matthew 15, the Syrophoenician woman, she comes at Jesus with humility and eyes to see who he is. And even though it on paper, culturally at the time, made no sense for him to pay her any bother, he does. He grants her request. Yet other times people come with false motives and they say cloying things, but Jesus sees right through it and won't play along. Here, they're coming at Jesus with obviously demanding, authoritative, we're the ones in charge around here, Buster, you shape up. It's been way too long that you've been doing this nonsense without giving us a clear statement of what you think. Well, what's Jesus going to do? Apparently he's gonna ask them a question back. Jesus replied, I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I'll tell you by what authority I'm doing these things. John's baptism. Where did it come from? Was it from heaven or from men? Dang it, that's not how it's supposed to work. But Jesus has been acting like this since Luke 2 when he was a 12-year-old boy in the temple. He can handle his business. What's funny is now the scene shifts. The people who are on the offense, the religious leaders, uh, they have to go on the defense. And they're not just going to answer the question. Jesus can do all this, you know, off the cuff, from the hip. He knows who he is. He's not lying. He's completely authentic, so he can just say stuff. They can't. They have to have a meeting every time they say something. So they do a little huddle. They discussed it among themselves and said, Well, if we say from heaven, he'll ask, well, then why didn't you believe him? But if we say from men, well, we're afraid of the people, for they hold that John was a prophet. So then they come out of their little huddle. So they answered Jesus, we don't know. Then Jesus said, Neither will I tell you by what authority I'm doing these things. And a little bit of paraphrases mine here. And then he just went back to whatever he was doing before. It's awesome. And this pattern repeats again and again and again. Look, maybe the word trolling is one that you have slightly different associations with, and you don't like me using that about uh the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Okay, I'm not offended by that. I hold Jesus in uh well, I the highest of regard, he's the best God in the flesh. I'm a real big fan, I'm more than a fan, so I'm never gonna argue with somebody who's like, hey, don't talk about Jesus that way. Okay, cool. We can agree to disagree on this, no offense intended. I mean it as a compliment. I adore the way Jesus handles his business socially while never compromising who he is and what he's doing and saying things that are true and moving forward the redemptive plan. There's this great scene in Nehemiah that I think is sort of predictive of how Jesus handles this stuff. Nehemiah's rebuilding the walls, and along come people who we know are bad actors. They've already outed themselves as bad actors. And they're like, ah, come down from up there. We need to uh talk to you about some things at the abandoned parking lot behind the storage shipping containers. It'll just only take a minute. You you can just come alone, it'll be fine. A little bit of paraphrase there, but that's suggests. Come down off the wall. We just need to chat. And Nehemiah's like, nah, I'm up here doing a important thing. No, I'm not coming down there. And they're like, Well, but you know, there's some rumors that you're actually bad. And he's like, nah, nothing like that's happening. You're making it up out of your own head. And he just stays up there and keeps building walls, and he accomplishes something architecturally that nobody could match ever in the history of ever. Like, you know, just a few weeks he built walls around an entire city because he was a man on a mission. It was from God, he knew what he was doing, and he was great at reading who he was talking to. This prefigures Jesus, who is up on the wall doing a great thing, an important thing. And all these people keep coming along throughout, nipping at his heels, being like, well, you know, come on down. Let's say we have some concerns, and we would hate it if these rumors about you were true. You know, maybe you could just clarify some things. Maybe you could just make a statement. And Jesus, consistently, by his actions, is like, yeah, I will engage you, but I'm up here doing a great work, and I'm not coming metaphorically down to the depths where you dwell. So Jesus answers their question with the same kind of social shrewdness he demonstrates throughout the gospels, and that he calls his followers to demonstrate as well. Yeah, destroy this temple, I'll raise it again in three days. Like you want to know if this is true, if this is real? Okay, the language is a little bit coded, but I'm going to get killed and brought back to life in three days. And it's going to be some of you guys who actually do the killing. Of course, they mishear it, of course they attribute bad motives to him, of course they don't get it. But the people with ears to hear and eyes to see, the people who kept their mouths shut and considered and reflected, they got it, and it came into focus more and more even as time passed. I just adore this attribute of Jesus. Again, feel free to use a different term than trolling if you would like, but he's a master of shrewdness and innocence, being unbelievably clever and also being unbelievably truthful and on mission. I want to take cues from him on this as I do many other things as well. All right, we will press forward into how all of this worked out next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.