This Theology Thursday episode tackles age-old misconceptions and emphasizes the importance of understanding biblical accounts in their historical and cultural settings. The discussion extends beyond religious teachings, touching on societal norms and cultural issues of Jesus’ time. Join in as we uncover the rejection Jesus faced in his own community and how this mirrors broader human experiences with truth and prophecy.
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I’m Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today, join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
Please turn to Mark 6, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, verse 1. Then he went out from there and came to his own country, and his disciples followed him. So Jesus went to his own country, that would be Galilee, and specifically his base of operation was the city of Capernaum. Now you could still visit the location of the synagogue that was there where the Lord would teach because its foundation is still there. And those kinds of particulars help us when we study the Bible to put the events in context. I think it also helps to keep track of the headquarters, so to speak, of the Lord and the Twelve and of the Apostle Paul. For example, after the Lord ascended into heaven, for the next decades, the Twelve Apostles ministered out of Jerusalem. So that was like their headquarters. Whereas Jesus’ base of operations was not in the south in Judah where Jerusalem is, but it was up north in the Galilee and here at Capernaum. Both of these locations are within Israel, of course. It’s interesting to note that Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, ministered out of Antioch, and that is to the north of Israel. It’s a coastal city on the Mediterranean. on the border of what today is Turkey and Syria, and that gave Paul ready access to transportation by ship to reach the Gentile world. So Jesus came to his own country. His disciples followed him. Now that’s what disciples should do. Will Duffy this past week was told by Christians here in the Denver area that God doesn’t care how we vote. And they are very concerned themselves about how Will votes, and they want Will to be concerned about what they think about how he votes. So why is it that God doesn’t care, but they care so much? So if you vote for someone because you think they’re going to give you more money in your paycheck… but you don’t care about the destruction of the family, the killing of children, murder, sexual immorality, socialism. You don’t care about that. You care about increased revenue. The Bible warns us that what good is great revenue with injustice? And these leaders, they have eternal souls. And we need to be as concerned for their souls as we are for the souls of anyone else. So I like it that the disciples followed him, and that’s what we should do in every circumstance. Verse 2, And when the Sabbath had come, of course, that is what we call Saturday, the seventh day of the week. When the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many, hearing him, were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to him that such mighty works are performed by his hands? Notice that words have a wide sphere of meaning and application. We wouldn’t normally attribute the ability to perform miracles to wisdom. We would attribute it to power. But wisdom has a sufficiently wide breadth of meaning to incorporate this kind of usage. I also like this word synagogue, which means assembly or house of assembly. The word comes to us from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It was done about 200 B.C. So a couple centuries before Jesus was incarnate, before he was born in Bethlehem, all the prophecies about him were not already written in Hebrew in the Old Testament, yes, but they were also translated into another language, into Greek. So it is invalid for someone to say, oh, those prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, they were written after the fact. That’s just not true. History bears great testimony to the antiquity of the Old Testament. So in the Hebrew, when the word assembly appears, the Greek translators, the rabbis who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the Roman world, the Hellenistic world to read it, they would use this word that we get synagogue. It starts with the Greek preposition sun, which means with. So together with, to assemble together. I’d like to take a moment to talk about the historicity of this with Jesus standing in the synagogue. The Jews would want to build a place of worship when they migrated around the world, but they had discipline, and they would say, we’re not going to attempt to build a synagogue unless we have 10 men, 10 men typically representing 10 families, committed to the task of building a synagogue. If you go to Capernaum today, as I mentioned earlier, you could stand in the synagogue as a number of us here have done. But you’ll be in the open air. There’ll be no roof over your head because the building itself lies in ruins, but the ancient foundation is still there. And that was built on an even older foundation so that archaeologists today are very certain of the location of the synagogue in Jerusalem. When we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written at the time of Christ and even before by a Jewish sect called the Essenes, we have chunks of the Old Testament written by hand and, for example, the entire book of Isaiah. And we know that the book of Isaiah is virtually identical to the book of Isaiah that we read today. Now, it’s written in Hebrew, and you can read it in Hebrew if you study Hebrew, or you can get an English translation. So when Jesus stood in the synagogue and quoted from Isaiah… We understand that this is a historical event. He’s reading exactly the words that we read today. It is not changed a hundred times over as the skeptics and atheists would accuse the Bible of being unreliable. As for the location, let me compare the Bible’s geographic reality to, let’s say, the Book of Mormon. When Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, claiming that God inspired his record of what happened in ancient America, of all things, a bizarre story that Jews about the time of Solomon got on a big log, a hollowed out log, and they came across the Atlantic and they populated the Americas. So the Incas and the Aztecs, the Navajos, they’re all Jews. That’s an absurd, false story. But he mentions the names of different locales, cities, regions. And other than, for example, if he says Israel or America, that’s nothing special. The whole world knows about Israel and America. But when he names locations that are exclusive to the Book of Mormon… Never once has a historian confirmed the existence of that location, not one time. A city name, never found. Compare that to the Bible that has the names of hundreds of geographic locales. So far, 97% of them have been identified, 97%. Likewise, every coin mentioned in the Bible has been found, documented by numismatists, whereas not a single monetary unit that appears in the Book of Mormon has ever been or will be found. And of course, other than his own associates, the people Joseph Smith knew and interacted with and started Mormonism with, and other quotes taken from the Bible, The individuals named by Joseph Smith have never been identified, whereas even though they lived thousands of years ago, the specific identity of more than 100 people in Scripture has been confirmed by archaeologists and historians from extra-biblical sources. Now just this week, the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of a 2,700-year-old seal Now, a wealthy person, an important person, or just someone of some substance in Israel and much of the ancient world would have a seal so that if they wrote a letter or an important document, they would fold it and put wax on it, melt wax on it, and then put their seal on it. And their seal would be like a stamp, and it would leave the impression of their name. Well, one of those seals was found in a drainage ditch actually beneath the drainage system just off of the Western Wall in Jerusalem by the Temple Mount from 2,700 years ago. And it has the name that we recognize from our English Bibles of Mataniah. Mattaniah was a Levite working in Jerusalem, and this very well could be his seal, but there were other Mattaniahs mentioned also in the Bible, so it’s somewhat of a common name. Now, the Hebrew for Mattaniah is Ma’anyahu. And if that sounds familiar, it should, because Benjamin Netanyahu is the current prime minister. In Hebrew, this is a very similar name, and it means giving to God. And so it’s so neat that the Bible, a thousand times over, is affirmed by studies, whether in genetics or astronomy, history, archaeology, geology, geography, very encouraging. So when we read that Jesus taught in the synagogue, there’s no reason to think that this is a parable or just a metaphor or a scribe filling in some colorful details to put around the message. This is the actual history of what happened. And now in verse 3, we find out about the Lord’s immediate family and what Jesus had been doing for the previous 15 years. He grew up. He’s a kid doing the things that kids are supposed to do. Then he becomes a young man, teenager, and adult. He grew up in a large family and became a woodworker making furniture. Let’s read verse 3. Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? So they were offended at him. Now notice the non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that if someone has great wisdom and is doing miracles, signs, and wonders, that we should be offended at him if we knew where he grew up. That doesn’t follow. How does that make sense? However, rebellion against God is not a sensible activity. Rather, they should have been excited that one so near to them could teach such astonishing things and attest to his own credibility by performing great wonders. Now this verse also names the half-siblings, the half-brothers of the Lord, and tells that he had sisters also. Mary was not ever virgin. Some claim that. She bore at least six other children and they would have been of Joseph, her husband. This was a good Jewish family. Good Jewish families, they love children, and they like to have kids. The boys were named Jacob, Joseph, Judah, and Simeon. As they appear here from the Greek New Testament and translated to English, they’re slightly different. James is the Hebrew name Jacob. Remember Jacob and Esau, Isaac’s sons. And Jacob had 12 sons who became the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel. So we have Jacob. And Joses for Joseph, one of Jacob’s 12 sons. And Judas for Judah, one of Jacob’s 12 sons. And Simeon, we have Simon for Simeon. So these are all names of Israel’s patriarchs. And this passage shows that the Roman Catholic Church is wrong to say that Mary never had any other children. That’s just false. We read in Matthew chapter 1 that Joseph and Mary did not have children in the course of nature as husband and wife until after she brought forth her firstborn son, Jesus. He is called her firstborn because she had others as named here by Mark. And remember that Paul complained in 1 Corinthians 9. He said, do we, speaking of Paul and Barnabas, do we have no right to take along a believing wife as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Cephas is Peter. So he’s grouchy because he’s traveling with Barnabas and they travel with their wives. And he says, what, we don’t have the right to travel with our wives? Well, Paul, it would be helpful if you had a wife. You’re stuck with Barnabas. It’s pretty much your fault. But he says, the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord and Peter. So the brothers of the Lord there, when he said that, he’s likely referring specifically to James and Jude. They wrote those two epistles together. toward the very end of the New Testament. So let’s continue in Mark and see if you think that what the Lord says in response to his critics is an absolute law or a rule of thumb, a generality. For after they were offended at him, and said, hey, we know this guy, and we know his family. In verse 4, but Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house. So he’s saying, they’re rejecting me. I’m from their family. I’m one of their neighbors, and that tends to be the way it is. So that’s a generality. That is not an absolute law. It doesn’t mean that everywhere Jesus went or could go, he would be honored, but only he would be without honor in his own neighborhood. Doesn’t mean that. Wouldn’t it be easy to take this and make it into a literal law and say prophets are always honored when they travel far away? They’re not. But this is an observation that the Lord is making about some kind of normal human behavior. We tend to not like lawyers, and rightly so. But we tend to interpret the Bible as though it had been written by lawyers, and we are lawyers investigating the text. And I don’t think God appreciates that. because God doesn’t speak like a lawyer would speak. When Jesus says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if you’re some kind of a demented masochist, are you then supposed to beat up other people because you like to be beat up? Of course not. That would be an absurd, twisting, taking something woodenly literal that is meant to be understood if you’re coming from the same perspective as the Lord is. If you’re not, and you are taking it literally, you’re all messed up. Now, the Bible is literal. We’re supposed to take it literally, but that doesn’t mean woodenly literally. So many false teachings that have fabulous proof texts are misapplying the proof text taking them wooden Lee literally like a man cannot pray if he has a hat on it dishonors him so if you’re an astronaut or an Eskimo or you’re submerged in the sea you shouldn’t pray wait until you’re back at sea level so It’s easy to become silly by pretending to be spiritual, but that would be a hyper-spirituality and an unreasonable use of the text. Now, as a generality here, a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house. People are often more kind to strangers than to those of their own home. And that’s an indication of how sinful our flesh is. We are. Those closest to you, those closest to me, know us best. And if they see me or you as impatient and mean, well, then that means they know who you are. They know what you’re really like. And rather than become defensive, it’s better for us to use that information as a lifeline and ask God, Lord, help me to be more patient. I know that love is patient. And that’s the very first attribute that Paul uses. describes in first Corinthians 13 to tell us what love is like it’s really easy to be patient with a total stranger and the checkout line at the grocery store after you after you after you but when it’s your own family in your own home it’s very easy to become irritated and so a prophet is not without honor except among his own relatives So Jesus is talking here about this role of a prophet, but the principle is the same. Jesus was rejected by his neighbors because he was a neighbor. And he was rejected by the leaders in Jerusalem. Do you remember why? Because he wasn’t from Jerusalem. He was a Galilean. He was from Nazareth. So the interpretation of this is, is that for those looking to reject christ any excuse will do in a dozen years of teaching the bible at denver bible church in the years before that since the show began in twenty one years of broadcasting out of denver seminars from the east coast uh… hawaii and tours we’ve taken to Israel and Turkey and Greece. We have never quoted this verse regarding our own ministry. It’s not our place to do so. And God knows that none of us here claim the office of a biblical prophet, though the phenomenon seems familiar. Let’s go to verse 5. Now he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. So is that literal? I mean, woodenly literal? Is it really the case that because people didn’t have faith, God couldn’t do a miracle through Jesus? Of course He could. You could have a whole nation of unbelievers, and Jesus could kill the firstborn son, or separate the waters of the Dead Sea, or do plagues, or do wonderful miracles. He can do this, but… He didn’t want to, the Father didn’t want him to, the Holy Spirit didn’t want to because they had no faith. Now, the next verse implies strongly that that was the reason in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 13, we see explicitly that the reason he didn’t do many miracles there was because of their unbelief. Verse 6, “…and he marveled because of their unbelief.” Then he went about the villages in a circuit teaching. That in a circuit reminds me of another Joseph Smithism when he said that the Jews, they sailed across the Atlantic and populated the Americas. And he says that they used a compass to get there. Now, a compass hadn’t been invented in the time of around Solomon for another thousand years or more than that. Why did he say they used a compass? Because the 1611, the old King James in the book of Acts, where it says they took a circuitous route around the Mediterranean, it says they took a compass and which it didn’t mean a magnetized compass floating in water to point north. It just meant they went sort of in a circle. But Joseph Smith, being not very well educated, thought they had a compass back then. And he said, well, they used a compass. That’s just an example. So Jesus went about the villages in a circuit teaching. And God marvels at our unbelief. He marvels. In the Bible, God expresses surprise, astonishment. He’s grieved. He’s overjoyed. God is a person, and he wants a relationship with us. When a child dies, rather than falsely claim that it was God’s will that the child was killed or died of a disease… Isn’t it more loving, and certainly true, far more accurate to say that God grieves with you? God grieves with you. Instead of, God did this to you, and you’re grieving, but he wants you to figure out why he did this. That’s so tragic. So here, he marveled because of their unbelief. Now, if he had predestined that they would not believe, why would he marvel? How do you marvel at something that you designed, implemented, intended? It’s like pouring a cup of coffee and it fills up. You’re marveled that the coffee filled up the cup. Isn’t that astounding? People say, why are you astounded by that? Didn’t you just pour it? Verse 7 says, speaking of Jesus, and he called the twelve to himself and began to send them out two by two and gave them power over unclean spirits. That, of course, speaks of exorcism, demon possession, the casting out of devils or demons. And that is a strictly New Testament phenomenon. It’s not recorded even once in more than 4,000 years of history presented in the Old Testament. So Jesus sent out the 12 and they preached, but clearly they did not preach saying Jesus is the Christ. That was not their message. It’s not till later that Jesus asks his own disciples, who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven. And whenever they would learn something really stunning, he would say, now don’t tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody. There’ll be time for them to find out later. So whatever they were preaching, when they went out to preach, which happened repeatedly, it was not the gospel as we would preach at Denver Bible Church or as a Baptist preacher on a Sunday morning would preach the gospel. believe that Jesus is the Christ and that he died to pay for your sin and he was raised from the dead or will be raised from the dead and believe in that and you’ll be saved. That’s not what they preached. They could have. Rather, they were preaching the same message that Jesus was, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And his next command has sometimes been taken as a pattern for all missionary work, not by the really good missionaries, but by some, by many.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, this is Nicole McBurney jumping into the broadcast. We are out of time for today, so be sure to come back next Thursday to hear the rest of this study. To find other resources and Bible studies, be sure to go to kgov.com. That’s kgov.com.
