1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,020 ♪ ♪ 2 00:00:08,020 --> 00:00:11,520 To make sense of the story of Israel, 3 00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:16,720 we have to make sense of the God of that story of Israel. 4 00:00:16,720 --> 00:00:20,060 At the heart of Christian theology, 5 00:00:20,060 --> 00:00:25,360 at the heart of the Christian message, is belief in God. 6 00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:28,440 And it's important to understand who God is 7 00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:31,480 in order to understand the story of Israel, 8 00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:34,200 to understand Jesus and what he was doing. 9 00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:38,280 Unfortunately, many people have grown up 10 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:41,200 with lots of bad ideas about God. 11 00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:46,200 Some people look at God as a resident cop. 12 00:00:46,200 --> 00:00:48,880 And most of us don't ever see policemen 13 00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:51,280 unless they have something bad to tell us. 14 00:00:51,280 --> 00:00:54,380 I've never had a policeman knock on my door 15 00:00:54,380 --> 00:00:56,480 and tell me that I'm a good citizen. 16 00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:58,380 And I don't suppose you have either. 17 00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:01,820 Other people look at God as just ancient, 18 00:01:01,820 --> 00:01:04,100 you know, long white hair, 19 00:01:04,100 --> 00:01:07,620 as we see in the images of European cathedrals. 20 00:01:07,620 --> 00:01:10,900 Other people think God was here for a while 21 00:01:10,900 --> 00:01:12,800 and is now gone. 22 00:01:12,800 --> 00:01:17,300 He's disappeared to a far country. 23 00:01:17,300 --> 00:01:21,400 Most people, however, have experienced God 24 00:01:21,400 --> 00:01:23,280 as a parental hangover. 25 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:27,780 There is a correlation between our understanding of God 26 00:01:27,780 --> 00:01:29,660 and our parents. 27 00:01:29,660 --> 00:01:31,880 If you have perfect parents, 28 00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:36,260 you are set up for a very good understanding of God. 29 00:01:36,260 --> 00:01:39,900 But since most of our parents are not perfect 30 00:01:39,900 --> 00:01:41,600 and we're not perfect, 31 00:01:41,600 --> 00:01:46,560 we have some corrections and remediations to take place. 32 00:01:46,560 --> 00:01:51,280 Many people have also experienced God as an angry judge. 33 00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:53,560 They've heard nothing but sermons about God 34 00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:56,160 threatening to throw people into hell. 35 00:01:56,160 --> 00:01:57,620 All of these ideas 36 00:01:57,620 --> 00:02:01,440 about God were outlined long ago by J.B. Phillips 37 00:02:01,440 --> 00:02:05,720 in a wonderful little book called "Your God is Too Small." 38 00:02:05,720 --> 00:02:10,120 So it is important for us to re-engage this topic 39 00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:13,480 as we read the Bible, as we understand Jesus. 40 00:02:13,480 --> 00:02:18,480 If there's anything I think that attracted people to Jesus, 41 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:21,140 it was his understanding of God. 42 00:02:21,140 --> 00:02:26,080 A German theologian named Adolf Schlatter once said, 43 00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:27,460 "Der erste und der erste, 44 00:02:27,460 --> 00:02:29,800 der letzte Gedanken Jesu, 45 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:32,700 war der Gedanken Gottes." 46 00:02:32,700 --> 00:02:37,440 And this could be translated the first and last 47 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:40,020 in the sense of the most important 48 00:02:40,020 --> 00:02:45,020 and continuing important idea of Jesus was ideas about God. 49 00:02:45,020 --> 00:02:47,500 And so it's important for us to understand 50 00:02:47,500 --> 00:02:49,940 what Jesus says about God, 51 00:02:49,940 --> 00:02:52,140 what he assumes about God, 52 00:02:52,140 --> 00:02:54,000 what he teaches about God, 53 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,300 and how he embodies God and reveals God to us, 54 00:02:57,300 --> 00:02:59,600 in the way that he lives. 55 00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:01,780 Of course, as a Jew, 56 00:03:01,780 --> 00:03:05,440 Jesus knew from his Bible that God was the creator 57 00:03:05,440 --> 00:03:07,200 and that God was the covenant maker 58 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:11,580 through Abraham and Moses and David. 59 00:03:11,580 --> 00:03:17,120 And Jesus, unlike the gods of the Greco-Roman world, 60 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:19,700 believed that there was only one God 61 00:03:19,700 --> 00:03:22,540 and that all other gods were really phantoms. 62 00:03:27,300 --> 00:03:29,640 But what does Jesus teach us about God? 63 00:03:29,640 --> 00:03:34,460 I think we can divide this into two categories. 64 00:03:34,460 --> 00:03:38,740 Jesus teaches that God is holy and that God is loving. 65 00:03:38,740 --> 00:03:43,740 Jesus teaches that God is always holy and always loving. 66 00:03:43,740 --> 00:03:47,420 He never acts just as a holy God 67 00:03:47,420 --> 00:03:51,640 and never acts just as a loving God. 68 00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:56,640 God is always loving in his holiness and holy in his love. 69 00:03:57,140 --> 00:04:01,280 We can speak of God, in a sense, of his holiness 70 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,180 as theophanic and cultic. 71 00:04:05,180 --> 00:04:07,900 He manifests himself. 72 00:04:07,900 --> 00:04:13,280 And in that worship of God's revelation in the temple, 73 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:20,380 we experience the awe and grandeur and majesty of God. 74 00:04:20,380 --> 00:04:23,620 That's why Mary begins the Magnificat: 75 00:04:23,620 --> 00:04:26,860 "My soul praises the Lord," magnifies the Lord. 76 00:04:26,860 --> 00:04:26,920 That's why Mary begins the Magnificat: "My soul praises the Lord," magnifies the Lord. 77 00:04:26,920 --> 00:04:26,980 That's why Mary begins the Magnificat: "My soul praises the Lord," magnifies the Lord. 78 00:04:26,980 --> 00:04:28,400 That's why Mary begins the Magnificat: "My soul praises the Lord," magnifies the Lord. 79 00:04:28,400 --> 00:04:33,460 God is majestic, and in some sense, he is separate. 80 00:04:33,460 --> 00:04:39,000 He is unlike anything else that we experience in this world. 81 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:45,020 And as a result of this, Jesus teaches his followers, 82 00:04:45,020 --> 00:04:48,080 and he embodies in the way he lives 83 00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:50,360 and in the way he talks about God 84 00:04:50,360 --> 00:04:53,020 and in the way he tells them to pray 85 00:04:53,020 --> 00:04:55,140 that God is to be revered. 86 00:04:55,140 --> 00:04:56,760 This is a thing that we have to be aware of. 87 00:04:56,760 --> 00:04:57,780 This is a thing that we have to be aware of. 88 00:04:57,780 --> 00:05:00,160 This is a theme that deserves far more emphasis 89 00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:01,940 in our churches today 90 00:05:01,940 --> 00:05:05,180 when we have become very casual and informal 91 00:05:05,180 --> 00:05:08,840 in almost all our approaches to God. 92 00:05:08,840 --> 00:05:12,800 Jesus teaches in the Lord's prayer, the first line, 93 00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:15,200 "Our Father who is in the heaven, 94 00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:19,340 may your name be hallowed." 95 00:05:19,340 --> 00:05:22,400 This is the word, may it be made holy. 96 00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:25,280 May it be treated separately. 97 00:05:26,300 --> 00:05:27,660 In the world of Jesus, 98 00:05:27,660 --> 00:05:32,600 people did not use the name of God lightly. 99 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:36,220 In fact, they substituted words for God. 100 00:05:36,220 --> 00:05:42,260 This is why Jesus says in Matthew 23:9, 101 00:05:42,260 --> 00:05:46,540 "You are to call no one on earth Father, 102 00:05:46,540 --> 00:05:48,620 for there is one Father." 103 00:05:48,620 --> 00:05:50,520 And he's talking about God. 104 00:05:50,520 --> 00:05:53,900 Now, this really puts a crimp in the way we talk 105 00:05:53,900 --> 00:05:56,080 because I'm a father, 106 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:58,180 and my son is a father. 107 00:05:58,180 --> 00:05:59,980 So we use the word father, 108 00:05:59,980 --> 00:06:03,700 and the early church used the word father for fathers. 109 00:06:03,700 --> 00:06:08,480 But there is a warning being given by Jesus 110 00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:13,480 that no one is to get close to the kind of fatherhood 111 00:06:13,480 --> 00:06:15,820 that our God has. 112 00:06:15,820 --> 00:06:18,920 And we are to revere that and honor it. 113 00:06:18,920 --> 00:06:23,920 Jesus was so serious about reverencing God and revering God, 114 00:06:25,860 --> 00:06:30,600 that he used language in the gospels that evinces this. 115 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:36,380 For instance, Jesus says over and over and over and over, 116 00:06:36,380 --> 00:06:39,820 "Kingdom of the heavens." 117 00:06:39,820 --> 00:06:42,300 We're not always sure exactly what this means 118 00:06:42,300 --> 00:06:45,260 in English today because we're not first century Jews, 119 00:06:45,260 --> 00:06:50,200 but this was probably an emphasis upon the distance of God 120 00:06:50,200 --> 00:06:55,400 from humans, the rule of God over humans, and the need for us 121 00:06:55,400 --> 00:06:57,680 to be reverent. 122 00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:01,200 There's another side to this that we learn from language, 123 00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:05,780 is that Jesus often spoke of God in the passive voice. 124 00:07:05,780 --> 00:07:10,600 Four times in the Beatitudes, Jesus uses a passive voice. 125 00:07:10,600 --> 00:07:14,060 "You will be mercy, you will be called sons of God." 126 00:07:14,060 --> 00:07:17,760 This is the language that could be unpacked, 127 00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:22,760 God will show you mercy, or God will call you his children. 128 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:25,180 Why does he speak in the past? 129 00:07:25,180 --> 00:07:29,760 He speaks in the passive voice because he wants God's name 130 00:07:29,760 --> 00:07:34,760 to be eclipsed from the sentence, and he is assumed, 131 00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:40,100 and this comes off conveying a sense of reverence. 132 00:07:40,100 --> 00:07:43,600 The holiness of God comes to fruition also 133 00:07:43,600 --> 00:07:48,100 in a very common theme in the Bible, in the Old Testament, 134 00:07:48,100 --> 00:07:51,720 in the prophets, in Moses, everywhere, 135 00:07:51,720 --> 00:07:54,960 in Jesus, in Paul, in the book of Revelation. 136 00:07:54,960 --> 00:07:58,340 And that is that there is a judgment. 137 00:07:58,340 --> 00:08:02,420 Jesus warns Israel that if they don't respond 138 00:08:02,420 --> 00:08:06,120 to the revelation that he is bringing to them, 139 00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:09,460 that the city of Jerusalem will be sacked. 140 00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:12,240 This is predicted in Mark chapter 13. 141 00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:15,820 One of the most common passages that people love 142 00:08:15,820 --> 00:08:19,900 to talk about today is the parable of the sheep and the goats. 143 00:08:19,900 --> 00:08:24,740 And they like to talk about encountering Jesus in the poor. 144 00:08:24,740 --> 00:08:28,780 And this is an important emphasis in Jesus, 145 00:08:28,780 --> 00:08:32,180 and it's an important ethical manifestation 146 00:08:32,180 --> 00:08:34,100 of the way Jesus wants us to live. 147 00:08:34,100 --> 00:08:39,100 But do we remember in that joy over that parable 148 00:08:39,100 --> 00:08:43,140 of the sheep and the goats, that this is actually 149 00:08:43,140 --> 00:08:46,380 a powerful description of judgment, 150 00:08:46,380 --> 00:08:49,960 that the goats will be assigned to one side 151 00:08:49,960 --> 00:08:52,800 and the sheep to another side? 152 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:54,520 Why does Jesus talk about this? 153 00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:58,420 He's fierce in his theme of judgment 154 00:08:58,420 --> 00:09:01,640 because he believes that God is holy. 155 00:09:01,640 --> 00:09:07,160 But Jesus, as I said, teaches about a God 156 00:09:07,160 --> 00:09:10,180 who is both holy and loving. 157 00:09:10,180 --> 00:09:12,680 And until we keep these two things together, 158 00:09:12,680 --> 00:09:15,620 we don't understand the teachings of Jesus. 159 00:09:15,620 --> 00:09:18,680 For Jesus, God loves us. 160 00:09:18,680 --> 00:09:22,200 And he manifests this in one of his most common 161 00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:24,300 forms of behavior. 162 00:09:24,300 --> 00:09:27,420 We call this table fellowship with sinners. 163 00:09:27,420 --> 00:09:34,680 Jesus calls tax collectors. 164 00:09:34,680 --> 00:09:39,460 He ends up in their home, which is a little bit offensive. 165 00:09:39,460 --> 00:09:43,580 And some of the people with higher religious scruples 166 00:09:43,580 --> 00:09:47,580 were nervous about Jesus eating with tax collectors 167 00:09:47,580 --> 00:09:49,380 and sinners. 168 00:09:49,380 --> 00:09:51,560 And Jesus talks about this at times. 169 00:09:51,560 --> 00:09:54,080 But he welcomes people to the table. 170 00:09:54,080 --> 00:09:56,300 Why does he welcome people to the table? 171 00:09:56,300 --> 00:09:58,540 He wants them to meet God. 172 00:09:58,540 --> 00:10:02,360 He wants them to understand that the God that they are encounter 173 00:10:02,360 --> 00:10:05,800 is a God who brings them to the table. 174 00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:11,520 Jesus doesn't call people to the table just because he's inclusive. 175 00:10:11,520 --> 00:10:16,100 He calls people to the table so that they will encounter God. 176 00:10:16,100 --> 00:10:20,940 They will encounter Jesus and be transformed by it. 177 00:10:20,940 --> 00:10:23,860 In his world, people didn't do this. 178 00:10:23,860 --> 00:10:31,680 In fact, we could say that in his world, people said, "If you are clean, you can eat 179 00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:32,820 with me." 180 00:10:32,820 --> 00:10:37,980 Jesus said, "Eat with me, and I will make you clean." 181 00:10:37,980 --> 00:10:43,280 And so he got this reputation of someone who ate with the wrong people. 182 00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:49,620 He's a friend of tax collectors and sinners, a drunkard and a winebibber. 183 00:10:49,620 --> 00:10:50,860 They talk about this. 184 00:10:50,860 --> 00:10:53,640 Well, this is language for the rebellious son. 185 00:10:53,640 --> 00:10:55,040 In the Old Testament. 186 00:10:55,040 --> 00:10:59,300 But at the same time, describing the way Jesus behaved. 187 00:10:59,300 --> 00:11:04,100 One of everybody's favorite parables is the parable of the prodigal son. 188 00:11:04,100 --> 00:11:07,040 Do we know how this story was evoked? 189 00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:10,320 Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. 190 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:15,300 The Pharisees say, "Why are you eating with these people?" 191 00:11:15,300 --> 00:11:23,420 And Jesus tells three stories, a story of a lost sheep, of a lost coin, and of a lost 192 00:11:23,420 --> 00:11:24,420 child. 193 00:11:24,420 --> 00:11:32,260 And his message is this: God rejoices when lost people find their way home and find their 194 00:11:32,260 --> 00:11:34,180 way to the table. 195 00:11:34,180 --> 00:11:41,980 This table was a table where Jesus transformed people from unclean to clean. 196 00:11:41,980 --> 00:11:46,280 It became a contagion of purity. 197 00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:52,400 And he welcomed people because in doing this, he made them one of his family and he embodied 198 00:11:52,400 --> 00:11:53,200 the kingdom of God. 199 00:11:53,200 --> 00:12:00,840 In the very way he lived with them. 200 00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:09,320 Another illustration of Jesus' emphasis on the love of God is that Jesus emphatically 201 00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:16,060 and distinctively, though not uniquely, Jesus emphatically says that God should be addressed 202 00:12:16,060 --> 00:12:17,120 as Father. 203 00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:21,680 The Aramaic word is Abba, and it occurs throughout the Gospels. 204 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:22,980 There is a concentration. 205 00:12:22,980 --> 00:12:30,340 In the Gospels, about God as Abba that we don't find in any other Jewish text of the 206 00:12:30,340 --> 00:12:32,220 first century. 207 00:12:32,220 --> 00:12:39,860 When Jesus taught his famous Lord's Prayer, he said, "This is how you should pray. 208 00:12:39,860 --> 00:12:45,980 Every time you pray, you start by saying, 'Our Father.'" 209 00:12:45,980 --> 00:12:52,760 That Jesus, in Matthew chapter 11, says that these things have been "hidden from the 210 00:12:52,760 --> 00:12:58,520 wise and the learned, and revealed to the babes that God is Father." 211 00:12:58,520 --> 00:13:06,800 When Jesus is on the cross, he prays "Father" several times. 212 00:13:06,800 --> 00:13:12,060 Father in the Jewish world always connoted two things. 213 00:13:12,060 --> 00:13:14,380 It meant authority. 214 00:13:14,380 --> 00:13:19,260 Fathers in a Jewish family were the leaders and the guides, and they had a certain sense 215 00:13:19,260 --> 00:13:20,260 of authority. 216 00:13:20,260 --> 00:13:22,540 Power, in fact. 217 00:13:22,540 --> 00:13:31,420 And yet, at the same time, the word Father connotes and suggests and embodies family 218 00:13:31,420 --> 00:13:32,420 intimacy. 219 00:13:32,420 --> 00:13:41,240 A Jewish man continued to call his father Abba all the way through his life. 220 00:13:41,240 --> 00:13:43,920 And this is the language of the family. 221 00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:52,320 It is not that far from our sense of daddy, or what we would call intense, intimate family 222 00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:53,640 language. 223 00:13:53,640 --> 00:14:02,640 That Jesus calls us to call God Father is an invitation to the family and to the family 224 00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:04,200 table. 225 00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:12,000 Together, what Jesus teaches us about God is that our God is both holy and loving, both 226 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:19,860 loving and holy, that we worship this God, but that this God picks us up and embraces 227 00:14:19,860 --> 00:14:22,200 us with his grace and love. 228 00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:27,420 The story of Israel comes to fulfillment in the story of Jesus. 229 00:14:27,420 --> 00:14:31,880 And the story of Jesus is shaped by the God of Jesus. 230 00:14:31,880 --> 00:14:40,440 And this God is intent on forming a people in this world that are called the kingdom of God. 231 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:46,520 And in our next session, we're going to look at this theme of the kingdom of God. 232 00:14:52,200 --> 00:15:00,240 The Kingdom of God