40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2023 Christmas Special

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Chad, Daniel, and Erick are joined by Scott Keith to talk about the proclamation of John the Baptizer's birth Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Freedom Lessons Album Your God is too Glorious, 2nd Edition by Chad Bird Schweitzer's Psychoanalysis of Jesus Christ: & Other Essays in Christian Psychotherapy by John Warwick Montgomery Free 2023 Advent Resources 2024 NWA Tickets (May 3-4) More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Erick Sorenson Chad Bird

Welcome to the Christmas episode of 30 Minutes in the New Testament and 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. This podcast, of course, is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. There's a couple podcasts living over there that has our guest on them. Today we are joined by Executive Director Scott Keith, who of course is one of those fellows that does the thinking on The Thinking Fellows. He's also on a podcast with me called Tough Text. You should go check both of those out if you've not done so. We are going to be talking about the birth of the greatest man who ever lived according to Jesus. See, you thought I was going to say Jesus, but Jesus says the

greatest man who ever lived is John the Baptist. The humility on Jesus, right? No one has ever been born that is greater than John, and you're like, yo, weren't you born? And the answer is yes, of course and it is christmas time and we would we could be talking about the birth of jesus which we've done numerous times uh but we thought talking about the birth of the forerunner his cousin john would be uh would be good so chad you see the way this works is that on 40 minutes chad's the reader and on 30 minutes eric's the reader on tough text i'm the reader and that doesn't mean that we're going to make scott be the reader i would say a little heads up would have been nice No, we're not doing that.

So I have to designate. So, Chad, you're going to be the reader on this episode, if that works for you. I can do it. That works for me. I know it's the New Testament, but you need to read it. Well, yeah, it is, technically speaking, the New Testament. But, I mean, it sounds basically like we're still in the Old Testament. That is one of the beauties of Luke 1 and 2.

It's like this beautiful bridge between the Old and the New, where you're like, wait, are we in the New Testament or the Old Testament? Because it sounds so Old Testament-ish. Well, I think when we were talking about doing this text, I was talking about that, where the birth of John the Baptist sounds like super Old Testament, like something you would read in the Prophets or something. It definitely does not sound like the later chapters of Matthew

or something like that. You're like, man, I feel like I'm right in. I mean, I got, like, priests and angels and, you know, miracles and all kinds of stuff going on. I got babies being foretold. That's Old Testament stuff for sure. So, yeah, so this is definitely the good bridge between the new and the old. Yeah, yeah. So let's take a look at, what, 5 through 7 would be a good way to start.

So Luke 1, 5 and following. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years. I mean, there you go right away. i mean you can't you can't get much more old testament than that we got aaron mentioned we got priest we got uh the division of abijah got this very torah language of being righteous before

god and walking blamelessly in the commandments and then i mean the real the real uh summit here is they're both old they have no children and elizabeth is barren i mean this is this is a set up for any reader of the old testament right here you're like all right i know where this is going yeah isn't it interesting that like the this whole like walked blamelessly and like we're righteous like this might be i don't know this might be the last people that that's ever talked about like it's like once jesus arrives no one no one does that no it doesn't say that about anyone besides the current company like back in the old testament there's like you get a story about someone you're like this dude was righteous walking blamelessly and you're like really

that's that's that's impressive i think one of the reasons that you have that in the in the beginning of this is because and you see this in the in the life of jesus where so you have this advanced couple and uh his you know she's barren and of course in the the mind of the people at the time they'd be like i wonder what she did to be barren for sure that was one the things that one of the things that stuck out to me in the first couple verses here is the fact that it's just true that at the time in judaism it was a reason for divorce like it was a justifiable reason in the theological sort of thinking of the time that if a woman was barren then even if a guy like zachariah who's a priest or zacharias who's a priest uh you know serving in the temple has the

right to just like get rid of her i mean that that's how much of a curse the barrenness was seen as back then you're dealing with sort of the pre-jesus corrective to how to view this kind of thing in the law um i'm sure that looking outwardly upon uh zachariah and elizabeth that they were walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the lord and it's a it would have been of in order to recognize them a very appropriate way to describe them yeah yeah and i think it's there too to let the reader know uh this corrective that jesus of course is going to bring up many times that her barrenness has nothing to do with how they're living right like this is not a this is not god saying well you're not gonna have children if you're gonna be that kind of person

which of course while also being a hallmark of why jesus needed to come because her barrenness is obviously the result not necessarily of her sin but of sin yep yep that's right if this were in the old testament it would say uh and all this was of the lord i mean that's that's a typical language right he's he's setting us up for uh for what is to come i mean you've got uh so many of these barren stories in the old testament where the the woman is barren they wait they wait they wait and then finally the child who is born from this previously barren woman often an elderly woman ends up being kind of a big figure in the salvation story i mean whether it's isaac or whether it's jacob or whether it's any of the others that we have scattered throughout the

old testament so i mean the fact that they're old and she's barren already is a clue to the fact that whatever's going to happen next the child who's going to be born is going to be a major figure in the the salvation story don't you it's almost a prerequisite to being a uh you know a lot of biblical figure a woman figure in the old testament right or in the bible in general yeah that starts out she starts out barren yeah there's always this this theme throughout all of scripture of sort of god reversing things as we expect them to be you know where the firstborn ends up not getting the blessing or the barren woman ends up having the promised child you know there this is this is what god is in the business of of doing all throughout scripture also a a great lead into

the virgin birth yes the opposite end of that i mean i think if you read all those old testament stories. This one too, the fact that she conceives is a miracle. So a woman who by nature would not conceive does conceive. Now it's on the opposite end of the age spectrum, but then you have that same thing happening with Mary. So in an ironic sort of way, all of these elderly, barren woman stories in the Old Testament where God allows them to conceive prepares us for the virgin than who conceived so this is a great lead-in to uh luke chapter two and it and it tells you that unlike the unlike today uh obviously there's people today who value having kids and everything but the the idea of not having kids today would probably some people be like oh sweet i can't

have kids well good i wasn't planning on it anyway i was going to be a dink you know what a dink is uh a dink is a couple who is uh double income no kids right yeah double income no kids i think i've been hearing this phrase again and again but and like it's a new one but chad probably remembers this this was big in like the late 80s yeah i think it's the worst well what's happening now is you're yeah you have uh dinks making videos sort of boasting about all the things they get to do because they don't have kids and then you have the opposite response on social media of seeing you're sad and lonely and all that.

See how much you like that when you're 70 and nobody comes to see you. It's going to be great. Yeah, well, anyway. Anyway, the point... Now we're getting into my love of podcasting. Don't make me too happy. The point is that

this sort of barrenness and not being able to have kids, as Eric was saying, was actually a legitimate cause for divorce. Not in the eyes of God, I don't think, but in society. and it tells you that it you have to understand that this is um considered not just by them but by everyone like to be a real tragedy right i mean this is a real being barren was a real bummer uh because there wasn't like a bunch of there wasn't a bunch of dinks running around

and at that time being like you know what we should do we should both work and have no kids that would be great uh that uh sort of mindset did not exist like the fact that they're old and have no kids it's a real bummer for them you're literally sort of pricing yourself out of any possibilities in old age yeah too yeah i mean this was a society where much like it should be i think where your children sort of look on you and as you grow into your older years as their responsibility and a lot of ways just like you were theirs when they were they were younger and there's a circle to it that's kind of beautiful that just doesn't exist now but certainly did then yeah or at least doesn't exist in the west yeah okay yeah all right we better some places it exists in big bear i tell

them every day every day when i get old you're taking care of me yeah every day all right chad we better get we better move on to uh the next section of verses here you know i thought we were just doing five to seven we probably could uh but we better not we better keep moving all right so uh verse eight now while he was serving as priest before god when his division was on duty according to the custom of the priesthood he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the lord and burn incense and the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense and there appeared to him an angel of the lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense and Zechariah was troubled when he saw him yeah I bet so and fear fell upon him but the angel said

to him do not be afraid Zechariah for your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear a son and you shall call his name John and you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great before the Lord and he must not drink wine or strong drink and he will be filled with the holy spirit even from his mother's womb and he will turn many of the children of israel to the lord their god and he will go before him in the spirit and power of elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the for the lord a people prepared man there's there's so much samson stuff going on and this uh like this is this sounds like the the birth of samson like all right here's

what's gonna happen like don't don't worry about it your wife's gonna have a baby of course in samson's case he told the wife this but uh yeah no strong drink he's gonna be great before the lord that's some some samson some samson stuff and then you have this other thing where he's gonna be like it's like samson but like no it's actually like elijah so he's gonna be uh a real maniac too uh like out in the wilderness and stuff the thing about john is uh if you're if you're a zachariah elizabeth and you're like oh good we're gonna finally have a kid this kid can take care of us in our old age like well sorry you got you got somebody way different than that coming uh this guy's gonna be right there's ain't nobody ever been

like this guy yeah i love the setup here too because uh so it starts out he was serving his priest before god when his division was on duty and he's in the temple so the uh most of our listeners might know this but in case you don't uh the uh all the priests were divided into all these divisions which were named like this one's named after after abijah and these guys didn't all like you know live in jerusalem and then work at the temple 365 days a year they would come for a two-week stint from wherever they lived i mean we know that they didn't live in jerusalem uh so they'd come they'd serve and then they go back home like in the parable of the good samaritan the priest is heading back to his hometown of jericho so he's on duty here and

i don't know for sure but there's a possibility i think probably a very strong possibility but this was the first time he was ever chosen to enter into the temple and to burn incense so I mean, he's already probably nervous. I've got to get this right. I've been waiting my whole life to do this. So he's making sure he does all the right things there in front of the curtain between the Holy of Holies and the Most Holy Place. He's burning the incense.

He's saying the prayers. And then all of a sudden there's this angel standing beside him. Yeah, no doubt he was troubled when he saw him. You think he wanted to run outside and ask the other guys, hey, is this dude always in here? That's what I was thinking. Is this normal? Yeah.

Is there supposed to be an angel when I do this? Right. Nobody ever told me this was part of the ceremony. It's important to keep in mind that, you know, at the time it's estimated there were over 20,000 priests, you know, sort of available. And so the vast majority of them would never get the opportunity to do what Zechariah is doing today. This is a really big deal in the life of Zechariah. It's probably the one and only time that he would actually be able to be the one that burns the incense. so maybe that's a different view than you know sort of people imagine in their mind when they think of a priest but there was just so many that you had to really delineate the duties like that

so this is i mean the context of this is like the biggest day of zechariah's life do you think too like that in two ways now well you have to you have to you have to i wonder this like gabriel comes to mary just at her house comes to joseph in a dream like why why what's the deal with if we angel can appear to zachariah wherever uh but he doesn't he does he appears here like where he's going and i think that but the reason for this is that he has this thing built up in his mind like i'm finally gonna get to go to do this thing and it's almost like an angel shows up when he's like doing the thing that he thinks is like the most important thing that he could possibly ever do this and just like yeah that doesn't matter yeah like i'm about like this whole thing

is about to not matter at all, right? Like, let me tell you something that's going to happen that does matter. That's what it seems like to me, because why? Why do it here, unless you're trying to say, you know, like this right here, you think that it's good news that you got, like, ooh, my lucky day, chosen by lots to do this? No, dude, I got way better news than that. Like, your wife's going to have a son, and that son is going to help turn

the hearts of the people towards the Lord. is going to prepare them for their Messiah, for their salvation, which is going to render all of this, what we're doing right here, like this means nothing. That's interesting, Dan, because if you kind of juxtapose that to the fact that it states that there was, I'm trying to find it here, a multitude of people outside where he's going. So it seems like there's already a multitude of Israel that is prepared, right?

um and that doesn't need to be turned to the lord and then the angel comes he goes in and he's supposed to be lighting the incense the angel freaks him out um tells him of this prophetic birth of his son and then tells his son tells him that his son is going to do the thing which already seems like is happening and so i think that i mean that's that's a really good insight that all this all this that you think is what god wants is going to come to an end yeah that fits with the ministry of john and jesus both because i mean john is the son of a priest so right if things would have gone the way they ordinarily went well then john would have been serving just like his dad did he would have been doing the same thing eventually you know serving

at the temple and burning incense but john's temple ends up being the wilderness yeah his vestments are camel's hair and a leather belt and his incense is baptism his incense is baptism well Yeah, I mean, he's out there doing—not just like all of this is going to be undone, like this doesn't matter anymore, but also what kind of guy is John? Like John's the kind of guy—ends up being the kind of guy that priests and Pharisees are very concerned about because he's out in the wilderness baptizing Jews. He's baptizing Jews like they're Gentiles that are trying to— He's baptizing Jews like they need it. Yeah, like, he's, like, doing proselytite baptism to people that are, like, that are, you know, that are already in. You know, he's baptizing the circumcised.

Like, what in the world is going on here? And telling everyone, everywhere, that the Lord is coming. Time to repent. Gotta repent now. Gotta get your sins washed away, because the day of the Lord is at hand. And so not only does John not really end up doing what his father does, but a whole lot of people that do what his father does are very confused, if not offended, by the ministry of John. Well, in 17, I don't want to—and then I'll be quiet for a second—I don't want to do too much theology here when we're trying to just do ex-Jesus. But at the same time, in 17 you have the, and he will go before him in the spirit of power of Elijah, right?

when that's that spirit of power when it uh put out there is called proclamation and that's the proclaiming of the gospel which is exactly what john does and then it's prophesied that that proclamation of the gospel do will do you know what it can do and nothing else can which is turn the hearts yeah yeah well i love the passivity of the crowd that john will be speaking to in this passage, that they're not the ones turning, that they are being turned through the ministry, through the vessel or the vocation of John's ministry. Well, through the spirit of power, which is the proclamation. And also, Zechariah would have known this, too. I mean, this whole idea of, hey, he's going to come to the power of Elijah, this would have—I mean, everyone's sort

of waiting for i mean literally at the passover when you do the passover you got like an empty chair for elijah right i mean like you're there's sort of this anticipation that somebody like elijah or elijah himself is going to return and so that's not just like a throwaway statement that zachariah is not going to understand uh and of course this dovetails is the first time this is done but like the elijah john connection happens over and over again so much so that there's this confusing thing we've done this in tough text before but uh it's one of my favorite things that jesus does with john where pete even the pharisees are like hey are you elijah or do you claim to be elijah and he's like nope and then jesus tells his disciples i'll tell you this much

that is elijah if you're willing to accept it you're like well what's happening here yeah and all this is yeah all this is building off of uh well in english bibles it's a very close to the old testament uh it's not the close in hebrew bibles but it's based upon the very end of malachi where he had the prophecy behold i will send you elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the lord comes and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest i come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction so anybody who knew the old testament hearing the language of the angel to zechariah would be like oh so the time has come yeah this is the elijah the one who is

to come who is going to usher in the the messianic age yeah verse 18 so the angel has had his say and now zechariah is going to respond zechariah said to the angel how shall i know this for i am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. And the angel answered him, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. I feel like you can just hear it in the text. Zachariah doesn't say a lot.

He's just like, how should I know this? I'm an old man. My wife's an old woman. It's like Gabriel gets upset immediately. He sounds upset. He's like, I'm Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, dude. What are you talking about?

You're talking to an angel. What do you mean, how are you going to know this? Did you not greet my presence with fear automatically, instinctively? Don't you think I have a little authority to say what I'm saying? We get over that, right? We're like, wait a minute, this still doesn't comport with what I think is possible. Well, I think part of it is this. Like when he says, I was sent to you to bring you this good news,

and it's like he's upset that he's not – it's like if you gave someone incredible news, and you were so excited about their response because, of course, their response should be awesome because you're bringing them this great news, and they're just a total bummer about it. And Gabriel's like, man, you've been waiting forever to light incest in this temple. I've been waiting forever to tell someone some news this good, and you are a real drag, dude. You know what?

I don't like your unbelief. You're just going to have your mouth shut up so that you don't spread this far and wide. I don't like your response. It will be fulfilled in time, but you need to be silent. It's also probably the busiest year Gabriel's had in a long time. i mean he's got this to do he's you know six months later he's got to go talk to mary um you know this is this is a big year for gabriel well and it's i mean it is it is true that like we according to the bible like uh the heavenly host is about this news i mean they're they're

into this whole thing you know and and so yeah it's like you've you've supposedly been hanging on for this good news for a very very you and your people for a very very long time and i'm here telling you miraculously in all my majesty that as eric pointed out just scared you a few minutes ago the good news and it's coming and you want to doubt it yeah just it just tells you who who we are i think about the surrounding i think about zechariah being there literally lighting incense that is symbolic of the presence of the lord and of praying to the lord lifting of prayers. I'm sure he prayed many, many times for the hope that he would get the news that his wife's pregnant. And yet when good news comes, he can't believe it. Zechariah here kind of pictures for us

what the whole problem was with the greater sort of temple system at the time, that you had all of these sort of actions being done to symbolize worship of God, but done in unbelief. And so unable and unwilling to hear or receive good news for themselves. Yeah, well, I bet you Zechariah stopped praying those prayers for a baby a long time ago, and there might be a lesson in that, too. God's answering this prayer, like, way down the line. I mean, I'm sure that that was a prayer that they'd given up on some time ago, even though I do think it'd be hilarious if Gabriel would have just said, when he says, like, how is this going to happen? I'm really old. My wife's really old. If he's like, do you even Bible?

are you a priest or what like what are you talking about that's funny you ever heard of abraham sarah yeah well i mean he is uh he is uh a specimen of us all i mean first of all i yeah this is a this miraculous appearance of the angel and then his immediate doubt i mean that comports with old testament story after old testament story where any faith based upon miracles has a short shelf life you know you see a miracle at the at the red sea and the next day you're grumbling as an israelite uh it just it just doesn't take very long for the for the sinful nature to to take over and jesus doesn't change jesus doesn't even change that man jesus be like feeding 5 000 people with you know five loaves and two fish and like the next afternoon they're

like what sign do you do that we may know when you're like i know huh yeah anybody who says today i mean just show me a miracle and then i'll believe in god yeah no no no you won't doesn't work that way we have a long list of examples of people who saw those miracles and they did not believe in the god who who sent them even if someone were to come back from the dead well i and here's the thing i think that's why it says of course uh you don't come to faith through your eyes you you come to faith through your ears and i think that's part of it's an earball thing yes it is the the eye of faith is the ear but the the thing that that gabriel's upset about here certainly is the uh he doesn't say like i'm you know he does say like i'm i'm i stand in

the presence i'm i'm here to speak to you but he is sort of he is rebuking his his ears here he doesn't say like here i am you can see me so now you know he's like i came and said something to you and you've not believed it his claim isn't i he does say i stand before in the presence of god but he doesn't say i stood before you in all my glory he says i preach to you i preach the gospel to you and you still doubt yeah yeah so verse 21 and the people were waiting for zechariah and they were wondering at his delay in the temple and when he came out he was unable to speak to them and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple and he kept making signs to them and remained mute and when his time of service was ended he went to his home after these

days his wife elizabeth conceived and for five months she kept herself hidden saying thus the lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people so this is most of uh this conversation perhaps lasts a little bit longer than uh then we pick up on because the people are waiting they're wondering you know it's been it's been a while it wasn't just like 30 seconds and now he hasn't come out so whatever was happening inside there he delayed his uh the typical time that it would take a priest to do this so uh you can uh you can imagine that they were you know whispering talking what was taking him so long we shouldn't have sent the old man in this was a terrible idea yeah i was thinking i'm gonna spill the incense

in terms of set something on fire. What is he doing in there? He comes out, can't talk. I've been making signs to them. I imagine that's just him. I mean, that's got to be an insane scene, right? Like, he comes out, and they're like, what took you so long?

He's like, mm, mm, mm, mm. And he's, like, trying to... I mean, some great charades. Pointing beside him, pointing, like, tall. Flapping his arms like angel wings. Something, dude. They may be like, this guy, something happened in there. Also, do you want to be the guy to go check out what happened?

Someone go in there and see. That would be a process for that. I would think. The next guy. I bet the process would take a while. Let me tell you this. If I had a job where there was a bunch of us, we had the same job, and one day the guy went in to do that job and then came out

and he couldn't talk anymore, and then the next time it was my day to do that job, I'd be like. Falling sick. Yeah. I'm feeling a little under the weather today, boys. I don't think I want to go. I don't want to be Jonathan instead. My lighting wrist is feeling a little sore.

I don't think I can strike that match. Yeah, dude. I don't want to be going in there. But it is interesting that Daniel's like, yeah, you're going to be silent until this is fulfilled. What do you do with unbelief? It's not just like that you don't believe, but like a lot of times you doubt God with your mouth. Like you speak out doubt. yeah and he's he doubts and his mouth is shut so he's he's preached to by the angel gabriel

the truth the gospel the good news he doubts his mouth is shut up and his mouth isn't opened again until much later in the chapter in 67 when the holy spirit descends on him and he now preaches the word of power for verse upon verse from verse 68 to 79 blessed be the lord god of israel it starts and he's now actually the one doing the the preaching he is the the preacher has churned from being the angel gabriel way back here where his mouth is shut up and then later on in the chapter the preacher is actually zachariah yeah that's right yeah yeah well he said at the beginning how could this be he begins with blessed be yeah let's see the lord yeah the god of israel that you know they they were gonna call john zachariah elizabeth is like no like we

got a name oh you got like you're gonna have a little baby priest here so like obviously we'll just name him after you he's gonna be like his dad he's gonna do what his dad does and right from the naming you know that this is not true like no no like he's got he's gonna be very different from his father yeah it's you know what's interesting here you know why why do you think it was that elizabeth after conceiving ended up hiding herself for five months from everyone what do you think the main motivation for that was i know a lot like a lot of times uh i don't know about barren women uh but uh i know like women who have uh been trying to get pregnant and then they get pregnant they tell people and they have like a miscarriage or something and then if they get pregnant again

later on they wait way longer usually until the time that they had to whatever point in the pregnancy they had a miscarriage they wait until after that time to tell people and i'm sure for uh elizabeth there is a there's a i mean you're really old and you're gonna have a baby uh i'm sure she there's some there i'm sure there's some this is too good to be trueness to the whole thing like i i i'm not gonna tell everyone super early in fact i'm gonna hide myself away for a long time until i feel that this is really gonna happen uh it's probably also really close to the time when she's actually like showing and right um you would have a much harder time concealing it beyond that well it's pretty obvious too i mean that a miracle has taken place

so i mean you talk about attracting attention uh being the talk of the community and um maybe she just wanted to avoid that as as long as possible because once it became known there was no stopping the you know both the hallelujahs as well as just kind of the tongue wagging and the gossiping and all that kind of stuff that always that always goes on among small communities so it's probably a combination of reasons why she wasn't quite ready to let it be known that uh you know here she is pregnant after all these after all these years 25 i mean it's it outrightly says um that she was reproached by her people for her barrenness right yeah so thus the lord has done for me in these days when you looked on me to take away the reproach among my people yeah and that's and that's

kind of what i was talking about early on like there's if you're barren uh the prevailing thought was you did something but it just there's something you did something to have to have somebody did somebody did something uh and and so there was i mean it's hard to imagine that now That you would, as opposed to treating somebody who wanted children, who was unable to have children, as opposed to looking at them with, like, compassion, and you would be like, well, you're a reproach. Like, there's something wrong with you, obviously. You end up, it's funny because Chad and I are going through Job right now, and it seems like all her community, like, Jobed her, like, pretty good. where they're like, you know, you would think if you roll up on Job, you would be like, dude, like, what can I do for you?

As opposed to being like, well, better fess up, Job. What'd you do, man? What'd you do? That must have been bad. But that's just how they thought. I mean, all the way up to, I mean, when they run across a guy born blind, what do they ask Jesus? Who sinned, him or his parents?

It's one of those two. That's it. There's two options here, and Jesus is like, that's not it. it just shows how prone we are to sort of karma type thinking you know we need to find some explanation and it's easier for us it gives us a sense of like order you know and control or the illusion of control well it's all it's all built something and therefore this well it's all built in self-righteousness like those are all righteousness projects like when you see somebody suffering something and the reason you want to say oh you must have done something is a way to

make it feel like you must be doing all right well that's not happening to me so it's good to know i'm better than someone i just i'm not gonna spend any time in it but the reading if you go to a church that's sort of the historical readings the reading for this last week was the mark one which is essentially the same story but it just jumps right to it i mean um yeah it goes right from sort of him being prophesied to him baptizing in the wilderness and that's your that's your entry into john the baptist yeah and mark is the gospel of immediacy he doesn't mess around it is yeah that's the most common word in that book immediately immediately immediately yes yeah well i i so i think uh you know you might be like is this really about uh this is i mean it's a cool

story uh is this is this really about christmas and uh i mean the answer of course is a yes i immediately, the next thing that happens is—in this, immediately—is, you know, the birth of Jesus is going to be foretold. Jesus is a humongous figure, and so sometimes we don't talk about John that much because they're kind of doing things at similar times, but—and I don't even know that I completely understand it, but I do know this, that out of the mouth of Jesus, John is very, very important uh to the ministry of jesus like jesus says so right god says so that john was uh wasn't for whatever reason necessary he was kind of uh how to put this he was like you take all the old testament you can press it into one person that's really who john was i mean he was

he was very moses like he was very joshua like i mean he was active at the jordan river where joshua led the people across of course he's in the wilderness he's obviously like elijah but elijah was partially patterned after the moses template i mean so you you have all and he's he's a son of a priest i mean he's he's the child of a of a of an older couple so this is like john pulls everything together in himself and so that way he's kind of the embodiment of the old testament of course the old testament is preparing us for for the messiah so he's like this living figure embodying the Old Testament with his, as it's often artistically portrayed, this long finger pointing to Jesus, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So he's like

the living Old Testament who points to Jesus and says, that's the guy we've been waiting for. Yeah, you're a pretty important figure if you're the first figure that says those words, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. I mean, that's quite the vocation that you've been handed. You mentioned something earlier, just a little bit ago, where you said, you know, we don't talk about John much. And one of the reasons that Jesus, I think, calls him great, at least one of the reasons, is because John would want it no different. Oh, sure. John is constantly pointing to Christ, saying he must increase and I must decrease. And to the degree that anyone is declared great, it's going to be because they're pointing to

the great one yeah amen well i think that's good i think we can we can leave it there uh hope everyone has uh a very merry christmas uh and uh and we will be back next year actually you know this is uh this will be the last thing that is released on 30 minutes before uh we start the whole thing over again with uh with some surprises so this is your your final thing on that thanks for uh thanks for joining us uh merry christmas guys merry christmas merry christmas merry christmas