Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Were Politics Like in Jesus's Day? | Who Is Jesus?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're asking, who is Jesus? Was Jesus into politics? Well, to be honest, I'm not sure you had much of a choice. I realize that in a democratic society, maybe there are some people who view politics as kind of being optional. I can participate or I cannot participate. However, true or untrue, that actually really is. In Jesus' day, there was no, such choice, politics were interwoven into his everyday reality. Well, why was that? It's because Jesus lived in military-occupied territory. Nearly 60 years before Jesus' birth, the Roman general Pompeii conquered Jerusalem and desecrated the temple by walking into the Holy of Holies, which was the most sacred site in all of Judaism at the time. Now, I am no expert on imperial aspirations, but I have to think that desecrating a populace's most important holy site is probably not the best

Starting point is 00:01:07 way to start up a new relationship. Most Jews definitely agreed with me because from that point forward, the relationship between the Jewish populace in Rome was always tense, rebellion, revolution. They were always fomenting just beneath the surface. Why? Well, most Jews believe that God was going to make things right again, that he was going to return and reign on earth as in heaven. He's going to write wrongs, overturn injustice,

Starting point is 00:01:35 and deal with their Gentile overlords. And that meant that they were always ready for the moment of revolution to come. So it's no surprise that violence broke out occasionally, especially on holy days like Passover when Israel remembered how God rescued them from their previous oppressors, empires like Egypt.

Starting point is 00:01:55 When Jesus came to Jerusalem on Passover, it was probably packed with Roman soldiers. They were there. to police the streets and to quickly cover up, douse, and any riots that might start. There will be no revolution on Passover. So it's no surprise that when he starts making claims to kingship on Passover week, this time when they were remembering how they were set free from past oppressors, it's no surprise that those claims end up getting him crucified. You see, Jesus was not the only would-be Messiah. Only 35 years after his death, a full-blown rebellion would begin right in the

Starting point is 00:02:30 region that Jesus grew up in. That rebellion, it ends up lasting four years, and it ends in the conflagration of Jerusalem and its temple. Jesus grew up with Roman soldiers on every street. They were collecting taxes. They were extorting a little extra for themselves, and they were always ready to unsheed the sword if they had to. So politics weren't optional for Jesus. Politics were dangerous. Politics were real. When Jesus was just 10 years old, a guy named Judas the Galilean came along, and he led a violent uprising against Rome in the very region where Jesus lived. But guess what happens? The kingdom of God doesn't actually come. All that comes is the swift retribution of Rome. Judas and all of his compatriots, they were actually crucified for insurrection.

Starting point is 00:03:16 It's, again, very possible that Jesus, when he's 10, saw those crucifixions. He saw these men crucified, put up on crosses for rebelling against Roman power. So just like today, you have to imagine people responded to all of these political pressures in many different ways. There were debates about how to respond to Rome. There were debates about how God's kingdom was going to come. There were questions about how God would set everything right. And you can imagine everybody had different opinions. Everybody was disagreeing. But as you can see, the world of politics and religion, we in the West, and especially in America, tend to separate into two different categories. Those things were not separate back in the times of Jesus, not for Jews, not for anyone.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Their religious aspirations, their spiritual aspirations were deeply tied into their political aspirations. They weren't two separable things. They were all wrapped up into one. So let's just talk for a second. How did people respond to the threat of Rome? Well, it seems like there were actually four major perspectives during the time of Jesus. I'm not trying to say that everybody falls neatly into these perspectives, but if you understand them, you'll begin to understand the debates, the questions that Jesus was waiting through when he was teaching. So let's start with the first response. That's the response of the Sadducees. Now, the Sadducees were an elite group of Jewish power brokers. Most of them lived in Jerusalem, and they were kind of

Starting point is 00:04:41 the people who kept the peace between Rome and the Jewish population. They acted like intermediaries. Now, they were conservatives in the sense that they took a laissez-faire approach to Rome, live and let live. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible as authoritative, which meant that they had rejected the prophetic visions, which actually forecasted God's coming kingdom. They were comfortable with how things worked, and they really just wanted to keep things that way. So first we had the Sadducees. Second, the Pharisees. Now, everyone thinks that they know a lot about the Pharisees, right? Those are the dudes who thought that they could go to heaven by being good people. Right? Wrong. Like most Jews, Pharisees were not.

Starting point is 00:05:21 not thinking about how to get to heaven. That was not a live debate. That wasn't a question people were bandying about. They were asking the same question everybody else was. How could they usher in God's kingdom to earth and participate in the resurrection when it came and see their Roman Gentile overlords pack up and leave? The Pharisees, they loved their Old Testament and they actually read it very, very carefully. And so they sincerely believe that God had graciously chosen Israel, and not because Israel deserved it, but just as an act of free grace, and that he chose Israel for the purpose of bringing his kingdom on earth. But they also correctly read and saw that Israel's idolatry, its impurity, its injustice, that jeopardized God's plan to establish his kingdom.

Starting point is 00:06:07 And because Israel did that, and because they had rejected God, God exiled them out of the land of Israel. And so they had to ask the question, how will God bring his kingdom back? How is he going to fix and solve the problem inside of Israel, they thought the answer was that the people that God graciously already loved, those people needed to follow God's law more meticulously. No more idolatry, no more impurity, no more injustice. Those are the things that got them exiled in the first place. So they would end up excluding and shaming people who jeopardize their vision of Israel, who threatened their mission to keep Israel pure so that God would come back and make things right again. Some of the Pharisees they thought that the kingdom would come only by divine intervention, while others expected some

Starting point is 00:06:53 combination of divine intervention and human revolution. When Jesus critiqued the Pharisees, he was critiquing that they couldn't see their own self-righteous hypocrisy. He was critiquing them because they cared more about external rules and regulations than the heart. He critiqued them because they were whitewashed tombs. They were clean on the outside, but dirty on the inside. Most importantly, he critiqued them because they had actually rejected God's divinely appointed means of bringing his kingdom. Jesus himself. Okay, so we've seen the Sadducees, kind of like ancient conservatives, Pharisees, a little bit closer to modern progressives. They want to see the revolution happen. They want to see culture purified and they want to see injustices removed. Two other perspectives existed

Starting point is 00:07:40 at the time on how to deal with the Roman problem and bring the kingdom of God. And those were the zealots and the Essines. Okay? So the zealots were basically guerrilla freedom fighters. No freedom, no peace. And at least one of Jesus' followers was caught up in this exact movement before Jesus called him. Lastly, we know about the Essines. The Essines were a community that basically broke off of mainstream society. You might think about modern-day Amish people, although don't try to make the comparison too closely. The Essines tended to live in small communities in the desert, or at least very deserted regions. And they practiced very strict adherence to the law, including regular practices of washing and bathing, actual baptism again and again and again. And they believe that the entire temple system was corrupt.

Starting point is 00:08:30 The Sadducees were corrupt, the Pharisees were corrupt, all of it was corrupt. And in their view, God had rejected the entire thing. He wanted nothing to do with the temple. and he wanted nothing to do with the average Jew at the time. They thought of themselves as being the sons of light who were bringing light into the darkness. They saw themselves as a community, which was living in the end times, and they thought that through their community, God would end the exile and bring about his kingdom. A lot of scholars have pointed out, by the way, that John the Baptist sounded somewhat similar to this group. I don't think he probably actually was an Essine,

Starting point is 00:09:05 But again, when you see the cultural context, you can't help but see how Jesus and John and other figures fit into these different groups. Okay, so let's pull back the camera. And here's what I want you to see. Jesus lived in a world as complex as ours. It was riddled with religious and political debates, violence and revolution. They were always seething under the surface of Roman oppression. There were debates. How do we respond to Rome? How do we get the kingdom of God to come? But like most people, Jesus just lived a normal life. He probably juggled the normal issues of getting a paycheck, finding work, loving his family, serving his community.

Starting point is 00:09:43 At times, those political and religious issues would boil up to the surface. At times, they would break out into actual violence against Rome and Roman retribution back against the Jews. At times, it was just talked about little debates that happened over the dinner table. We have to understand that Jesus lived in a very politically and religiously charged world. And when he talked about the coming of the kingdom in that context, it had a real meaning to those people. He was speaking to Jewish hopes and expectations while simultaneously subverting and challenging what it was that they thought the kingdom of God might mean. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:10:20 If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Were Politics Like in Jesus's Day? | Who Is Jesus?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.