Who is This? (Level 2 | 40)

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part to play in the unfolding drama.

Prepare for your role as you learn your history, your enemy, and your king.

Welcome to the Bible Brief.

Join us today as the religious leadership of Israel reacts to Jesus.

The prophet like Moses who speaks God's words and the king who has come to rule.

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Since the baptism of Jesus by the prophet John, Messiah has been doing the unexpected.

Rather than a conquering military leader who defeats the Roman occupiers and sets up a

kingdom, he's a roaming teacher in Judea, teaching the people and his disciples about the

coming kingdom.

He's teaching about how kingdom citizens live in the world as they wait for the kingdom.

And about how the faithful life is blessed, even in the midst of difficulty and persecution.

Messiah is teaching about the law demonstrating that the real standard of the law of Moses

is the standard of total righteousness from the heart and in the mind.

He's revealing that this standard is so perfectly righteous that it can only be satisfied

by God himself.

One corruption inherited ever since Adam and even the garden leads humans to inevitable

sin and this sin makes everyone fall short of the perfect glory and righteousness of God.

Though ultimately fulfilling the kingly office, Jesus is primarily acting as a prophet

in his earthly ministry of teaching and preaching.

He's a prophet like Moses speaking the words of God to Israel like Moses way back in the

wilderness with the Israelites.

But where Moses escaped death by the hands of Israel, God the sun became a human who

would suffer the fate that Moses escaped.

In fact, in many ways, Jesus is the ideal Moses, paralleling the life of Moses in stark

repetitions.

Their lives both start with salvation from murderous death as infants and the parallels

only grow from there.

The similarities between the two men are perhaps best highlighted, however, in the teachings

of Moses and Jesus.

In his context, Moses went up on to Mount Sinai to receive the teaching from God that was

the basis for the law.

Moses was a prophet that spoke the words he received from God.

However, in Jesus context, he was like Moses, but different from him.

Jesus also goes up on a mountain to deliver his famous sermon, but the difference is the

source of the words.

Jesus doesn't receive the teaching from anyone.

Instead, he himself is the source of the words of God.

God the sun, communicating the very words of God, the ideal prophet.

Now this similarity between Jesus and Moses should help us understand Jesus in the gospels.

He's primarily exercising his role in the office of prophet while he's teaching in Judea.

He's going around like the prophets of old and telling others God's words.

That is his own words.

And just as with those prophets of old, there are some who listen, believe, and accept

his message, and there are some who reject his message and seek to silence him.

What is Jesus' message?

That the kingdom of Messiah is coming and has to be entered humbly by God's mercy and

through God's righteousness received by faith.

Faith not merely in the message, but in the God who will accomplish the message.

The same God who is proclaiming this message all around Judea.

But this kingdom message of humility, mercy, and faith is hostile to a proud and sinful

world.

In fact, it attacks the very foundations of the style of righteousness measuring that the

Pharisees and other leadership had grown so fond of.

Jesus' message was a message not just of a coming kingdom, but of himself.

The king who would rule the kingdom only entered through the grace of God.

In rejecting the message of Jesus, Jesus himself was rejected.

And in rejecting him, the kingdom was rejected.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus, this prophet-like Moses, we see the beginnings of rejection

by the religious leadership in Israel.

Rejections formed through the hardness of heart and the faithlessness and the power of

the Messiah.

One day Jesus was teaching, and the Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there.

People had come from Jerusalem and from every village of Galilee in Judea, and the power

of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick.

Just then some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat.

They tried to bring him inside to set him before Jesus, but they couldn't find a way

through the crowd.

So they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles in the middle

of the crowd right in front of Jesus.

And Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven.

But the scribes and the Pharisees began thinking to themselves, who is this man who speaks blasphemy?

Who can forgive sins but God alone?

Notice their question, who is this?

Who is this who speaks blasphemies?

They assume with no evidence that Jesus can't forgive sins.

And so they accuse him in their thoughts of speaking falsehoods about God.

Further, they ask another question in their minds that rings with irony.

Who can forgive sins but God alone?

They rightly understand that only God can forgive sins, but they wrongly assume that Jesus

couldn't be God in the flesh.

And knowing what they were thinking, Jesus replied, why are you thinking these things

in your hearts?

Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or to say, get up and walk?

Jesus in effect says to them, look, anyone can say your sins are forgiven.

But no one but God could be involved in the healing of a man from paralysis.

Then he continues saying, but so that you may know that the son of man has authority

on earth to forgive sins.

He said to the paralytic, I tell you, get up, pick up your mat and go home.

And immediately the man stood up before them, took what he had been lying on and went

home glorifying God.

Everyone was taken with amazement and glorified God.

They were filled with awe and said, we have seen remarkable things today.

To these religious leaders, Jesus provided a proof that he could indeed forgive sins,

and it wasn't just words.

He could forgive because he had the power to forgive and to prove that he had the power.

He simply said to the paralyzed man, rise and walk.

Jesus showed them a miracle similar to the signs that God gave the Israelites throughout

the Hebrew Bible.

Remember the pillar of cloud and fire, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna bred from

heaven, the destruction of Jericho, all these evidences of God's power to save the nation.

And yet throughout the Hebrew Bible, we see the Israelites continue to reject God's

rule over them.

They reject him at Mount Sinai and build a golden calf.

They reject him as king over them after coming into the land.

They reject him under Jeroboam by building two more golden calves, and they reject him

through national disobedience of the law under many of the kings.

Rejection among the Israelites is common.

Historically, the response of faith is the exception, not the rule.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, to us that the leaders of the Jews begin to reject

Jesus just as their forefathers rejected God.

Another example of this is in the case of the Pharisee named Simon.

Something odd happens at his home when he's gathered among others with Jesus because

soon a woman of sinful reputation enters the home bearing a gift.

She brought an alabaster jar of perfume, as she stood behind Jesus at his feet weeping.

She began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair, then she kissed

his feet and anointed them with the perfume.

Simon the Pharisee is a guest, and he thinks to himself, if Jesus really were a prophet,

he'd know that this woman is no good.

Jesus interrupts his thoughts, though, with a parable saying, two men were deaders to a certain

moneylender, one owed him five hundred denarii and the other only fifty.

When they were unable to repay him, he forgave both of them.

Which one then will love him more?

I suppose the one who was forgiven more, Simon replied.

You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

And turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman?

When I entered your house, you did not give me water from my feet, but she wet my feet

with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You did not greet me with a kiss, but she has not stopped kissing my feet since I arrived.

You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume.

Therefore, I tell you, because her many sins have been forgiven, she has loved much.

But he who has been forgiven little, loves little.

Simon is getting a lesson from Jesus for the ages.

His point is simple.

The woman knew her own sins, and knew Jesus was the only one who could forgive them.

Her expression of love is an embodiment of faith in Jesus.

Further, the comparative lack of love shown by Simon to Jesus is evidence of Simon's opinion

of himself.

He apparently does not think his sins amount to so much that he would need to be forgiven

much.

With his own sins viewed as little, he believes his need for forgiveness as little.

And so he doesn't show Jesus the kind of love that this woman does.

Then Jesus emphasizes his point.

He says to the woman, your sins are forgiven.

But those at the table began to say to themselves, who is this, who even forgives sins?

And Jesus told the woman, your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.

Again, Jesus is before the religious leadership forgiving sins.

In some ways it's as if he's saying, you've got to respond, pick the left or the right.

I can either do this or I can't.

I'm either the son of God or I'm not.

Your move.

Jesus through his actions is forcing a response.

And at a time coming very soon, the religious leadership do respond in violent fashion.

It's after about three years traveling and preaching through Judea that the ministry

of Jesus the Messiah hits a fever pitch as he approaches Jerusalem before the Passover

feast.

In an entrance unlike any other, the crowds of the city meet him in remarkable fashion

while the religious leaders look on.

A massive crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees

and spread them on the road.

The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed him were shouting, hosanna to

the son of David, blessed as he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

When Jesus had entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this?

The crowds replied, this is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth and Galilee.

In this monumental event, the crowds are identifying Jesus as the son of David, that seed of David

who would inherit his throne, and they identify him as a prophet who speaks God's words.

The crowd is getting it right and the religious leadership is beginning to worry.

Later in the same week, Jesus is in the temple of Jerusalem and the blind and the lame come

to him at the temple and he healed them.

But the chief priests and the scribes were indignant when they saw the wonders he performed

and the children shouting in the temple courts, hosanna to the son of David.

The highest religious leadership in the nation are indignant and they're upset at what

the children are saying about Jesus.

Wasn't he going to correct them?

Wasn't he going to tell them that he wasn't the son of David, the Messiah?

Wasn't he going to tell them to look for another?

Do you hear what these children are saying, they asked?

Yes, Jesus answered, have you never read from the mouths of children and infants you have

ordained praise?

These children know exactly who Jesus is.

The religious amateurs, the fishermen, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, they know who

Jesus is.

The religious leaders?

Well, they had been stuck at the same question through all of Jesus' ministry.

They kept saying, who is this?

Who is this?

Who forgive sins?

Who is this so-called son of David?

But it would be this week, the week of Jerusalem welcoming their kingdom.

That these religious leaders would finally show their hand.

Soon the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the courtyard of the

high priest whose name was Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus covertly and kill

him.

For the religious leaders, the question, who is this?

Finally had an answer.

Who is this?

He's a dead man walking.

Join us next time as the plot to kill Jesus' thickens, while the lambs in Jerusalem are

being prepared for the Passover feast.

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