Dr. Manny Arango (5:41)
There's a moment here in Luke I want to remind us of this one little nugget, okay, that the four gospels all give us a four. Four different pictures of Jesus. In Mark, Jesus is the ox, okay. In John, Jesus the eagle. In Matthew, Jesus is the lion. And in Luke, Jesus is the man. So he's the most human. In the Gospel of Luke. And here's what happens in the garden of Gethsemane. Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly. In a sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Now that should tip us off to something that happened in the Hebrew Bible, in the Tanakh, in the Old, the Old Testament. I don't know if you remember this, but Adam is taken from the ground. And once Adam is taken from the ground in Genesis chapter three, God curses the ground, says cursed is the ground that I took you from. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. And then the next story of the Bible, Cain kills his brother Abel. And it says that the blood of Abel cried out from the ground, that the ground now becomes a character in the Bible in, in the Flood, over and over again. The authors of the Bible say that God sent the flood in order to cleanse the ground of. Of wickedness, to cleanse the ground of sin. And what that means is that this Adama, the dirt that God had taken Adam from, that the fabric, the soil of humanity was like tainted. It was cursed. So it's hard to get good fruit out of ground that is been tainted with sin. And here's where the curse on the ground finally breaks. That curse that got it put on the ground in Genesis chapter three, that curse that we hear Abel speaking out against his brother who has killed him, that curse is broken as what? As his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Before Jesus blood is ever shed on the cross. His blood is shed right here in the garden. And it frees you and I to actually finally get love, joy, peace and patience and all the other fruit of the spirit out of this soil of our souls, the soil of our life. Because the blood of Jesus has broken the curse that was on the ground, the stuff that Adam was made out of. So Those are just two nuggets from chapter 22. Jesus is then arrested. One of the. One of the guys with him cuts off the soldier's ear. Jesus puts it back on. He says, I'm not leading a rebellion. Peter totally disowns Jesus. And Peter's going to get reinstated in a ministry again. The guards mock Jesus. And now we actually get into chapter 23, and there's now a new character. His name is Pilate. Pontius Pilate is the governor, okay? He's there as a representative of Rome. And now in verse 8, we see Herod and Pilate are now beginning to have conversations. Herod would be the Jewish king. Now, this is not the same Herod that was alive when Jesus was born. This is a different Herod that was called Herod the Great. This would be Herod Antipas, okay? And we're going to get another Herod. In the Book of Acts, his name is going to be Herod Agrippa. There are lots of Herods in the Bible. And this is interesting. Herod and Pilate had never gotten along, but now they actually get along because they both agree that this man named Jesus has to die. And so Herod would be the Jewish authority and Pilate would be the Roman authority that both declare that Jesus is going to die. And what is the crime? What's the crime that he is. What is the crime that Jesus has committed? Well, here's the official crime. Pilate says, I find no basis for a charge against this man. But they insisted. He stirs up the people all over Judea with his teaching. And then they have to say something. And so here's what they say in verse two of chapter 23. And they begin to accuse him, saying, we have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar. Now, you have to realize, if Jesus is going around saying that he's king, this is a political statement. And the word gospel is a political word, okay? Alexander the Great had a gospel. Caesar had a gospel, and that gospel meant that they were king. The gospel is not that Jesus died for our sins. The gospel is that Jesus is king. If you want to know what the three words of the gospel are, it's simply, Jesus is king. And that gospel message threatens the power structures that are in Jerusalem, the Jewish power structure and the Roman power structure. So Jesus gets handed over to be crucified. We get to the crucifixion of Jesus, and it says this, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. So even as Jesus is being crucified, he's asking for forgiveness. They divided up his clothes by casting lots. The soldiers are going to come up and mock him. And then there's this really, really cool moment in verse 47. The Centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, surely this was a righteous man. You see how the people who are supposed to understand the gospel don't. Okay, the insiders don't get it. But a centurion who's not grown up understanding the prophets of Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah, a centurion who's a total pagan, who's an idol worshiping Roman soldier, understands that Jesus is a righteous man. What is it that this Roman centurion saw? Well, it says this in verse 44. It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the morning. So the first thing he sees is darkness. For the sun stopped shining and the curtain in the temple was torn in two. And Jesus called out with a loud voice, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Why did the sun stop shining? Well, the sun stopped shining because Jesus is the light of the world. The sun stopped shining because Jesus, in this moment on the cross is actually the only light that anybody needs. What's the next thing that happens? The curtain in the temple was torn in two. Well, what was the curtain? The curtain was protecting humans from the holy of holies. And the reason that the veil or the curtain in the temple is torn is because Jesus's flesh is torn to pieces. Jesus is essentially saying, I am the curtain in the temple. I am the thing that is protecting or separating humanity from the holy of holies, which is the glory of my Father. And now that my body has been torn in two, now not only can you come in to meet with my Father, but the holiness of God can come out and invade the world. It's not just that the curtain was keeping people out. The curtain was also keeping the holiness of God from people. Remember earlier, a couple of days ago, earlier in the Bible reading plan, I said there's a redefinition of holiness. That holiness is no longer. If I'm unclean and I touch something that's holy, I make it unclean. No, now holiness is a force in holiness. If Jesus, holy, the one with the issue of blood, doesn't make him unholy by touching him, but Jesus, since he is holy, makes her whole by being touched by him. It's a redefinition of holiness. Jesus is then buried. But of course, it's not the gospel without the resurrection verse chapter 24. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took spices that they had Prepared and went to the tomb. While the men are scared, the women are going to go minister to Jesus. They see a risen Lord, they go and they tell the guys, they then run to the tomb. And then the Gospel of Luke is the only gospel where we get this road to Emmaus. We have two disciples that are walking about seven miles from Jerusalem back to Emmaus. And when do they realize that it was Jesus they they have been walking with the whole time. They realized it in verse 30 when he was at the table with them. He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were open and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us. When Jesus opened the Scriptures, what does he say? Well, verse 27 tells what he said. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself, which gets us to our timeless truth of the day, that all of the scriptures point to Jesus. At a professor in college that made me promise that I should not get people to fall in love with Jesus, but that I should get people to fall in love with the Bible. And if I got people to fall in love with the Bible, they would eventually fall in love with Jesus, because all of the Scriptures point to Jesus. There's a lot of people who fall in love with Jesus, but they fall in love with their version of Jesus. Whereas if you fall in love with the Bible, you will always fall in love with the true and right version of Jesus, the biblical version of Jesus. I think that in Protestant or Pentecostal settings, we kind of downplay the importance of communion. We downplay the importance of this sacrament. But for the disciples going to Emmaus, they don't even recognize that Jesus is Jesus until Jesus performs the communion for them. Because the act of communion actually has a way of opening our eyes. Because in the symbols of the communion, we actually see the Gospel, the broken body of Jesus, in the shed blood of Jesus. Now, whether like the Catholics, you want to believe that it's transubstantiation, or like the Protestants, you believe that it's just a symbol, I actually find myself somewhere in the middle. I think there's truth in both. And clearly for these two disciples, something like scales fell from their eyes when they began to see Jesus serve them communion. And I think that when we do communion in church, scales fall from people's eyes and they're able to see that the broken body, the veil in the temple that's been torn into that broken body of Jesus. That that is actually the bread and the wine represents the new covenant which is the blood of Jesus. Timeless truths, nerdy nuggets, and a lot of contextual context clues that I hope has helped you to appreciate the Gospel of Luke in a brand new way. This concludes like the Gospel of Luke. I think we're eight days into our journey. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we dive into the first couple chapters of the Book of Acts. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thank you so much for joining me on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, it would mean the world to me if you'd give us a follow rate and review the show. And don't forget to share. You can learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and find us on Instagram hebible department if you want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.
