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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 60. Okay, 59 days down. I don't know how many days to go. Welcome to day 60. We're in the Gospel of Matthew. I think we got a couple days left in the Gospel of Matthew. I love the Gospel of Matthew. I hope that you're getting a lot out of it. If you haven't done the reading for today. I'm pretty sure that we're looking at Matthew, chapter 21, 22, 23, and 24. Four short chapters. Well, actually, I would say they're kind of long chapters. I'm not gonna lie. Four chapters in the go of Matthew. This is confrontational Jesus. Okay? This is savage Jesus. This is Jesus, who is very upset with the chief priest and the Sadducees. There's gonna be some things he has to say about the Pharisees. However, really the big focus here towards the end of Jesus's life, the last week of his life, is going to be his conflict, confrontation with the chief priests. In the Sadducees. They actually have are the people who, if you're just looking for who's the literal people who are going to be responsible for the death of Jesus, it's the chief priests and the sad. You sees, not the Pharisees. Okay? Jesus is gonna be in conflict and confrontation with the Pharisees all throughout his ministry. But the Gospel of Matthew is actually quite clear that it's not the crowds. I've heard a lot of, like, incorrect sermons where people are like, see the crowds, you know, they loved him on Palm Sunday and then they turned on him and it's, ah, that's not completely true. Okay? Actually, the chief priests keep scheming because they're scared to crucify Jesus because the crowds love him so much. Okay? So I know I'm, I'm splitting hairs here, but if you haven't done today's reading, go do that. If you've done today's reading, let's dig in. I'm gonna give you some context clues, and I'll give you a nerdy nugget. Then I'll give you a timeless truth, as is our custom on our daily Bible reading journey. All right? Matthew, chapter 21, verse 12. It says this Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there, okay? So Jesus is going to come into sharp conflict with the temple, all right? And who runs the temple? The chief priests, okay? The sad you sees run the temple, all right? When you think of Sadducees, you can think of, like, televangelists, but that come from, like, royal lineage. These are. This is an aristocracy, okay? These are the most powerful men in all of Israel. Let's see. He overturned the tables of the money changers. In the benches of those selling doves, it is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer. But you have making it a den of robbers. So the issue isn't actually with the exchanging of money for the sacrifices. The statement is actually doesn't match completely with Jesus's action. The thing that he's mad about is that the chief priests and the Sadducees have made a killing, okay? They have made a financial killing on the people. And there isn't like, hey, this church hurt me, so let me go to another church. No, there's only one religious institution, and that is the temple. And they run the temple. And they're corrupt. Like, they're insanely corrupt. Think about this. They're so corrupt that in books like Luke, Zechariah is actually a righteous priest. And the text has to say that, like, hey, he was a priest, but he was a righteous one, okay? Because most of the priests at this point are not righteous. And the high priest are definitely not righteous. So the chief priests and the Sadducees is the group that runs the temple. And of course, Jesus has conflict with them. Then verse 14, the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did in the children shouting in the temple courts, hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Do you hear what these children are saying? They asked him. Yes, Jesus replied, have you never read? From the lips of children of inference, you, Lord, have called praise. And he left them and went out to the city of Bethany, where he spent the night. What happens when he leaves? He curses a fig tree because that fig tree is a symbol of the temple. So this last week of Jesus life is gonna be marked by confrontation, sharp confrontation with Israel's leaders. And I just wanna delineate which leaders we're talking about here. We're talking about chief priests and Sadducees, not so much Pharisees. Let's move on to Matthew, chapter 21, verse 33. Jesus starts telling a parable about a vineyard. And I want to give you context for this vineyard. Matthew 21:33. There's a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. When he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place when the harvest time approached, his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. Now let's compare that to what's happening in Isaiah chapter 5, because Jesus is doing something really, really fascinating here. I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with choices vines. He built a watchtower in it. Okay, so we already have multiple elements, okay, being borrowed from Isaiah, chapter five. Then he took. He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Wait a second. In Matthew's parable, the owner of the vineyard is going out. Cause there is fruit, okay? Here there's not fruit. That's interesting. So that means In Matthew chapter 21, it says he rented the vineyard to some farmers, he wants fruit from it. So there's an owner and there are tenants. Verse 35. The tenants seized his servants and they beat one, killed another, stoned a third. Okay, at this point, the chief priests and the Sadducees are listening to Jesus parable. And they're definitely already thinking Isaiah chapter 5. And in their mind, here's context. In their mind, here's what they're thinking. Yeah, the Romans have occupied the land. The Romans have become the tenants in the vineyard. And every time we try to exercise freedom, we end up being persecuted by the Romans. But Jesus has one up his sleeve finally. But when the tenants saw the Son, they said to each other, this is the Son, let's kill him and take his inheritance. So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those servants? He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, they replied, and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time. So the chief priests immediately realized at the end, oh, this is not a parable condemning the Romans. This is a parable condemning us. That actually there is fruit, that the people of Israel are fruitful, that the problem is not the people. The problem are the leaders. The problem are the tenants. The problem is the religious leaders. That should, should be caring about God's people. But instead of caring about God's people, they're lining their pockets. They are corrupt. They care about themselves more than they care about God's flock. Verse 43, Jesus makes it very, very clear, okay? Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. Anyone on whom it falls will be crushed. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus parable, knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet. So the chief priests are like, oh, we thought he was talking about the Romans. Because think about it, right? He asked the question in verse 40. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants, right? The chief priests answer, he'll bring those wretches to a wretched end. They answer, right, because they think that Jesus is saying that the Romans are the tenants, but really they are the tenants.
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Unknown Co-host
What if I told you that what you're learning in this video was just.
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Dr. Manny Arango
The tip of the iceberg?
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Unknown Co-host
The Bible department is actually powered by arma. What is arma?
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Dr. Manny Arango
I'm so glad you asked.
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Unknown Co-host
ARMA is an online subscription based platform that we design to help people, everyday people, learn the Bible for themselves. We started ARMA so that anybody, anywhere could have access to trustworthy and entertaining Bible and theology content. In addition to this podcast, we have over 60 courses on individual books of the Bible, on theology topics, and on some hot topics like homosexuality, tithing and women in ministry. But really, ARMA is a community, a community of people that I've gotten to know. A community where thousands of people are currently finding family, asking questions and nerding out on the Bible together. If you want a community to read the Bible with you this year, or if you want to dive into some deeper theological content, or if you want.
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Dr. Manny Arango
More exclusive access to me and the.
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Unknown Co-host
Entire armor team, how about you go to thebibledepartment.com I'll be sure to post.
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Dr. Manny Arango
The link in the description of this video.
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Unknown Co-host
Let's make this your year to become a Bible nerd.
- [10:47]
Dr. Manny Arango
Let's keep moving. This is just confrontation, confrontation, confrontation. Let me give you a nerdy nugget. Let's go to Matthew chapter 24. This is a passage that gets used for rapture theology a lot. We're going to go to Matthew chapter 24 and we're going to go to verse verse 40, Matthew, chapter 24, verse 40. Two men will be in the field. One will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding at the hand mill. One will be taken, one will be left. So up until the 1800s, the left behind. This left behind doctrine wasn't even a thing. This literally got invented because of this thing called the Schofield Study Bible. But people swear to God. Rapture theology is like, from the Bible anyway. For thousands of years, nobody interpreted the Bible this way. But here we are. So let's actually think about what's being said. Let's put this in context. Okay, let's go up to verse 36. But about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving up in marriage up until the day Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken, one will be left. Now let's think. In the flood, the people who were taken died and the people who were left survived, right? So this whole idea that, like, oh, Christians are going to get taken away is like, that's not.
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Unknown Co-host
That's not logically following.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Okay, now let me give you two other examples, okay? Just straight from Jesus in Matthew. Matthew, chapter 13, verse 30 says, Let them both grow together until the harvest. At that time, I'll tell the harvesters, first collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned. Then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn. So which one leaves, which one stays? The wheat stays. The weeds get burned. Next. Matthew, chapter 13, verse 49 in 50, this is how it will be. At the end of the age, the angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace and they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is good fish and bad fish. So do you want to be the fish that gets left or the fish that gets taken and thrown into the fire? No, I want to be the fish that gets left. Okay, so this escapist theology is actually not very biblical that I'm gonna, like, get caught up in the air one day and, you know, anyway, anyway, I don't wanna get on my soapbox, but the nerdy nugget here is that when Thessalonia is gonna get is gonna talk about being caught up to meet Jesus. And the metaphor that's being used is the way that you would greet a Roman emperor after a victory. You would go outside the city, you'd meet your king, you'd get in line behind him, and you return back into the city for a triumphal procession. I'm excited about flying for a couple of minutes or hours or however long we're gonna meet Jesus in the sky when he returns. But then, guess what? We're gonna get right behind him and come back to this earth. Cause this is our home. When the Bible says that this earth is not our home, that does not mean that we are gonna get rescued from some bodily earthly existence. No, what that means is the values of this world system. That's not my home. That one day heaven is going to come down and I'm not going to become an angel. Nope. I'm going to continue to live in a embodied physical reality. But heaven and earth will become one and this earth will get redeemed, repurposed. That this earth will be made new. Completely new. So any escapist theology that supports this idea that Christians are up and out of here? I'm not really. I don't really rock with that. All right, let's go back to chapter 23. I'm going to give you a timeless truth and we're going to get out of here. I'm going to actually. Have you read Matthew, chapter 23, verse 13, verse 15, verse 23, verse 25, verse 27, verse 29. Okay. It says, woe to you, teach of the law Pharisees, you hypocrites, what do you teach the law Pharisees, you hypocrites, what do you teach the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, what do you teach to the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, what do you teach to the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, what do you teach to the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites? I mean, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Okay, now here's another thing that you need to realize is that Jesus gives seven woes. Okay? So we're going to unpack a lot here. Seven woes. If you go to Isaiah, chapter five, you'll actually see where these woes come from. In Matthew, chapter 23, Jesus is going to give seven woes. If you go to Isaiah, chapter 5. Remember, we've already been to Isaiah 5 to talk about the parable of the vineyard. If you go to Isaiah chapter 5 and you go down to verse 8, you'll see the first woe. And then in verse 11, you'll see the second woe. And then in verse 18, you'll see the third woe. And then in verse 20, you'll see another woe. And then in verse 5, you'll see another woe, and then a verse. And then verse 22, you'll see a sixth woe. So everyone who's there listening to Jesus in Matthew chapter 23 is probably counting like, okay, yeah, okay, yep. There's the first woe from Isaiah, second woe, third woe. And woe is kind of like cursed, like be cursed, like woe to you. Not like woe. Not W O, a H, but w O, E. Okay, woe. It almost means like damned, like cursed or damned. It's strong language. So they know that there are six woes from Isaiah. There are seven woes that Jesus is now going to give in Matthew, chapter 23. And what is the number seven? The number seven is all about completion. Okay, so what does Jesus say in Matthew, chapter 23, verse 32? What does Jesus say? Go ahead then, and complete what your ancestors started. As Jesus standing there, he gives a first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. And then they're not ready for a seventh. He gives a seventh, and they go, wait a second. He's completing what Isaiah started. And then he drops the bomb. Not am I completing what Isaiah started? Yes, but you're completing what your ancestors started. Okay, now let's break down this word hypocrite. This is where we're going to get our timeless truth for the day. I hope all this nerdy context ness is helpful. Here's where we're gonna get our timeless truth for the day. The word hypocrite in Greek, okay, Does not mean to say one thing and act a different way. That's not how that word. That's not what that word means in context. That's what we've made it mean in current society and culture. Here's what it actually means. It just means to act, to be an actor, to do things for a show. The Pharisees are practicing what they preach, but they're doing it in public to be seen. They're doing it publicly for a show. Someone asked me recently, you know, how do you feel? You know, you always have to be on. And I was like, I guess it doesn't feel that way to me because I don't feel like I'm performing. Like my life is not a performance. And so it's not. I say one thing, do something different. I know that's what we mean by hypocrite, but just in context, it really means to live your life like it's a show. A Pharisee could preach one thing and do the very thing that they are preaching. Their actions and their words line up, but they're doing it in a spirit of performance. They're doing it because there are people around. And I know maybe we think, oh, like, well, do. Do they also act that way privately? Because if they act that way, if your private self and your public self match, then there's integrity. But I think Jesus is really getting at, like, this thing in us, this performer that lives on the inside of us. I think that's what the word hypocrite is really getting at. Like, hey, like, don't. I need you to resist this urge to put on around people. I need you to resist this urge to. To. To act like you're not acting. And there's a difference between who you are in public and who you are in private. And there's a lot of nuance there, but I just wanted to hone in on that. And so our timeless truth is that it may be easy for us to look at this passage and go, oh, I'm not a hypocrite. But then when we dig a little deeper and we actually understand how Jesus used the word, you may realize, oh, you know what? Yeah, there is a little bit of acting and performing in what I'm doing. And I know for people who lead in church and maybe who are on staff, you know, leading is a public thing. And so it can sometimes feel like it's a show or like it's acting or like, you know, you're on. And I think there's something in there that Jesus wants us to, like, navigate and ask hard questions. Because the Christian life is not a show. It's not a performance. And I think sometimes, as I read through the New Testament, persecution is so front and center that I really think that Christianity gets warped when we live it from a place of great privilege. And I am thankful for the privilege of living in a nation where Christians are not persecuted. And I don't dare desire to be persecuted. But as just someone who's observing and going man, Christianity looks a lot different in our context because there's this variable called persecution that the New Testament had that we do not have. And so by when Jesus says hypocrite I think there's a slight difference in what he means than what we mean. And I think that difference is something that we need to dwell on and meditate on. And I don't know what that means for you 100%, but I know for me, learning that has been a challenge. And, yeah, just wanted to put that out there. That's my timeless treat for the day. All right, tomorrow we got day 61. I believe. Believe it's day 61. Tomorrow we're gonna be looking at the very end of Matthew, and I'm gonna give an interpretation on Judas that you may or may not have heard before. I love you guys. I'm so proud of you. Let's keep your streak going. If you're on a streak, let's go. I'm so proud. I'll see you tomorrow. Love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on.
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Unknown Co-host
The Bible Department podcast.
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Dr. Manny Arango
You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free. Free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.