Exploring My Strange Bible - Love and the Rebirth of the Universe - Gospel of Matthew Part 29

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

We are in the “passion” week during Jesus’ stay in Jerusalem for Passover, and there are a series of controversies. Today we explore a controversy that Jesus has with some priests. They try to trap Jesus in a scripture-type puzzle, but he really doesn’t fall for it. We watch Jesus deal with controversy, the future, resurrection, and more in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we're going to keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew. All right, well, in this episode, we're going to keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew.

We're in the 20s of Matthew, which means that we're in the Passion Week, Jesus' final week in Jerusalem for Passover. Here, Jesus is involved in a series of controversies with different groups of Israel's leaders in Jerusalem. And what we're going to ponder today is a controversy Jesus is in with a group called the Sadducees, or in Greek, the Sadduceos. They're the descendants of the line of Zadok, or Zadokites. Actually, the word Sadducee comes from the Hebrew word Zadokite, or the descendants of Zadok. Anyway, that one's for free. So the point is they're priests. They're very suspicious of Jesus, and they try to actually trap him in kind of like a scripture puzzle. And he just won't fall for it. He gets right in their faces about it.

But what's particularly important about this teaching of Jesus is here we get one of the most important windows into Jesus' own view about the resurrection and the new creation. And the metaphors and the imagery he uses to talk here about the future for God's world and God's people in the new creation, it's unique. This is one of the only places that we get it in the teachings of Jesus. So these sayings have actually puzzled a lot of people because he doesn't quite frame things up the way that much of modern Christianity talks about these things. But once you see them in their Jewish and biblical context, wow, there's so many profound things happening here. So there you go. We're in Matthew chapter 22. And there you go.

Let's open our minds and hearts and learn together. there you go. Let's open our minds and hearts and learn together. While you're turning to Matthew, it's chapter 22. We're going to look at verse 23 and following. You know, this time of year, for many people, at least, the holidays and the turn of the year, lots of memories, right? Family memories and so on. And so I have a very vivid memory connected to the end of the year, the new year, and the story that we're reading today. Does anybody remember Y2K? Do you remember how the world didn't end? Like, the computers didn't, whatever. Anyhow, what I found myself doing on the evening of Y2K was in a basement with some friends.

I was dating the woman who would become my wife, Jessica. And, you know, when you're in that season of a relationship, a guy will often do things that he wouldn't otherwise do. And so I, on the evening, brought in the new millennium by watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And I won't ever watch it again, I'll say that much. Now, what that has to do with the message, I'll let you figure out. Verse 23, verse 23. Now that same day, the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,

came to Jesus with a question. Teacher, they said, Moses told us that if a man dies without having any children, his brother must marry that widow and raise up offspring for him. Now, there were seven brothers among us, but only one bride. So it's not, that's all. That's the only reason I told that story. But every time I read the story, that's what's in my mind. Anyway, so there were seven brothers, you know, and the first one got married and he died. Now he had no children, and so he left his wife to his brother. Now the same thing happened to the second and the third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, Jesus, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of those seven, since she was married Jesus replied,

That's my paraphrase. But it's not far, is it? I mean, what a ridiculous story. It's hard not to... You're in error, as what the New International Version, and that's fine, that's correct. But you can tell it's so stupid.

You don't know the scriptures. You don't even grasp the power of God. At the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They will be like the angels in heaven. And about the resurrection of the dead, haven't you read what God said to you?

Quote, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. End quote. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at Jesus' teaching. All right. What did you wake up thinking about this morning? Certainly angels and the resurrection and whether there'll be people married in heaven, right? Hot topic of the day. So, obviously not. This is a strange story. I mean, it's interesting. There are some, some of you are interested in theology questions like this, you know, and so to think about heaven and what that will be like and, you know, this thing about the angels and marriage or

whatever, that's interesting to you. You like thinking about that. The rest of you are normal, right? And so you spend your time thinking about things that affect your day-to-day choices, and you're trying to follow Jesus or whatever. And so, like, what does this have to do with anything? This is so strange. And, you know, for a while, I've always had this story in my head. I remember reading it for the first time as a new Christian, and it was quite strange to me. And then after the seven brides or seven brothers, now you know that that's what stuck in my head too. But man, I have been so blown away by what's going on in this story as I've reflected on over the last couple weeks. I'm really excited for us to explore it together. For many of us, questions about heaven and what

will heaven be like, you know? Will you drive the Corvette forever of your dreams or something, you know? Or you'll run the marathon in your amazing body or something. Like what? Like heaven fits that kind of category of questions for us, just like speculation or imagination. It's interesting to think about, just like it's interesting to wonder if God can make a rock too big for God to lift or something like that. You know, it's just like, it's what, but it doesn't, it doesn't, this idea doesn't have any teeth to it. And that's not true for Jesus. Why on earth are the leaders of Jerusalem picking a theological fight with Jesus about the hope of the resurrection of the dead?

And it's because in their day, this idea was not just like get together with friends and wonder. This idea mattered. And this idea made a difference, certainly for Jesus. So where are we in the story? And that will just unfold why this is a significant topic alone. So where are we in the story? We're going through Matthew, and we're in the last seven days of Jesus's life in Jerusalem leading up to his execution. And if you've been following with us, you know Jesus turned up the heat the moment he arrived at the capital city. So he rode, uncharacteristic of what he's been doing up to this point, he rode in to the city very publicly, big procession, you know, music,

parade, acting like he's the king of Israel, of the city. And then he marched into the city and went to the most public place right at the center of everything in the temple. And then he marched into the city and went to the most public place right at the center of everything in the temple. And he, you know, did the stunt, right, with the tables and overturning and that whole thing. So he's acting like he owns the place. So then, of course, the leaders of the city and the temple are angry at him. And so they pick a fight with him. They reject him publicly. And then he told three parables to try and help people grasp what is going on as the leaders of Israel reject him. Those three parables. And now he's in three fights with them. They're picking fights with him. And this is the second of three. The

first one was last week. Remember last week about taxes? You pay taxes to Rome. And now it's this theological battle about the hope of the resurrection. Why are they, what does this have to do with anything? Just put yourself in Jesus' shoes, and if that's hard for you, right? So put yourself in one of the disciples' shoes. What on earth is motivating Jesus to do what he's doing in Jerusalem over these seven days? And you can't just say, he's Jesus. He does what he does, you know? So like, no, but he's a man. He was a figure in history.

He had motives driving him. What did he think he was accomplishing? And what was motivating? What would motivate a lone, you know, he's got a band of disciples, but it's a lone figure to just start a kingdom of God movement and be very public that it challenges the powers that be, and then to ride into the capital city and waltz into the center of power and just start making everybody who's in power angry, right? But like, what would motivate a person to do that in spite of the fact that he knows that they want

to kill him? They have for a while. And now he knows that the plan. He's been trying to tell his disciples. That he knows he's going to die here. At the end of this week. What motivates him to do that? And there are. I think we can put together from his teachings in the story.

That there's a number of things motivating them. One of them for certain. Is the hope of the resurrection. Because for Jesus, the hope of the resurrection isn't just the comforting idea that there's a place where you'll exist after you die. That's not what the idea of the resurrection is. The idea of the resurrection is a uniquely Old Testament and then Jewish idea, that the God of Israel, whose story is told here, is a God who will not let human evil, and he will not let spiritual evil and the suffering and the tragedy of human history get the final word. That's what resurrection means. What it means

is that there's hope for our world, and there's a hope for our world to be set right and made new. And that's a powerful idea. If you have religious people who believe that things are really screwed up and things have to be made new, and they are not afraid to die for that belief, that's powerful. In fact, that can be terrifying.

If those people are willing to kill for their vision of hope, aren't they? That's terrifying. Read a newspaper. But if the person who has that belief, they're marching orders, and they think the meaning of life is love God and love your neighbor, that's a movement worth paying attention to. It could actually be good news. And that's precisely what Jesus sees himself doing. Jesus had a vision of the future that he talked about in many places. Resurrection is one way that he talked about it. One of my favorite phrases that

Jesus used when talking about Jesus' hope for the future, we actually passed it already back in Matthew chapter 19, but I'll just put the phrase, the sentence up here. It's one of my favorite, even words or ideas that Jesus used. When Jesus looked to the future, one way he can describe it is this way. He describes it as the renewal of all things. When the Son of Man, that's himself, sits on his glorious throne. So, okay, and you know, always with me, teaching you new gibberish, right? I don't know how useful this is for you come Thursday to know Greek and Hebrew words, but isn't it fun? You know, you just feel like you've learned something. So who wants to give a crack at that one? It's a lot of consonants. I know it. So polynganacea, accent on the last word. Say it with me. Polynganacea. Polynganacea. So it's a compound word in Greek made up of two different

Greek words. Like we have in English, like butterfly, which is not in Greek made up of two different Greek words. Like we have in English, like butterfly, which is not a fly made out of butter, but it's butterfly. Somehow that's a different thing altogether. So here it's two Greek words, polen, which means again or another time, and genesia, from which we get our English word genesis. That means birth, genesis. which we get our English word, Genesis, that means birth. Genesis. So, another birth. A rebirth.

So, what is the hope that motivates Jesus to do what he's doing, despite threats of opposition and death in these final days in Jerusalem? Jesus is driven by a hope that God is on a mission to renew his world, to give it new birth. And he believes that what he's going to do here in the city is the hinge of history in that story. Something's going to happen here. And he's committed so he can talk about this future hope in terms of the whole universe being reborn. And if you stop and think about that, you can also, I think, probably remember another famous teaching of Jesus where he said that not just the universe needs to be reborn, but people need to be born again. That's a fairly famous phrase now in American culture. I'm not sure it has the best connotation anymore. But so being born again, follower of Jesus, what does he mean?

We live in God's good world, but something has gone so fundamentally wrong with it, it needs to be rebirthed. It has to be born anew. That's true for human beings, and it's true for the universe as a whole. This is Jesus' hope. It's what's motivating him to do what he's doing here in Jerusalem. And so for the leaders of Jerusalem to challenge his view of the resurrection, they're trying to

undermine his hope and his motivation for doing. This is not an idle speculation that you do with your friends, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, right? No, we're at the core of the story Jesus believes he's living out and bringing to culmination there in Jerusalem. And because somehow in the history of Western Christianity, our ideas about all of this, right? How is it that an idea that was so powerful and that drove Jesus to do remarkable things has become, in our cultural

situation, just like a speculative thing? Like, what will heaven be like? I don't know. Does it matter? Not really, but it's fun to think about. Like, how did that happen, right? How did it become such a harmless idea? Well, I'm not sure. I think that's a long, complicated answer to that question. But it's definitely not. For the most part, in Western Christianity, we've lost the story that the Bible is actually trying to tell us about these things. Now, what I could do is erase all this.

It's a lot to erase. And draw on the chalkboard for 15 minutes. Some of you know about my other job, which is working with a little creative design studio called The Bible Project. And we make short animated films where we're trying to unpack books of the Bible and ideas in the Bible. And that video on this very topic, convenient, is only six minutes. So what do you want? 15 minutes, chalkboard, six minute video? I would prefer that too. So maybe you've seen this one before. I don't know. A lot of you know about the Bible Project. If you've seen it before, deal with it and watch

it again. And if you haven't, but it'll just bring it all together, and we'll go back into the story, and I think it'll unlock some things for us. So let's go ahead and watch that. So in the Bible, the ideas of heaven and earth are ways of talking about God's face in our space. So I think God's face is really well-known in the industry, in rivers and mountains. But my understanding of God's face, it's a little different.

And what we do get in the Bible are images trying to help us grasp God's space, which is basically inconceivable to us. So these are two very different types of spaces. Yes, they're different in their nature, but here's what's really interesting is that in the Bible, these are not always separate spaces. So think of heaven and earth as like different dimensions that can overlap in the same exact way. So we talk a lot about going to heaven after we die. But

we don't talk a lot about that. Which is crazy because the union of heaven and earth is what the story of the Bible is all about. How they were once fully united and then driven apart and about how God is bringing them back together once again. So what's the backstory here?

Where heaven and earth are completely overlapping? Yeah, this is what the Bible's description of the Garden of Eden is all about. It's a place where God and humanity dwell together. There's perfectly no separation. And humans then partnered with God in building and flourishing the evil world. But as humans, we wanted to do things a different way. We wanted to be God and Adam and not make the world perfect.

Yeah, so we have these two spaces now. And the Bible actually uses lots of different kinds of words and phrases to refer to these two spaces to make up a clear distinction. So you said that these spaces can overlap. So explain how that works. Yeah, this is where we have to start talking about temples. Because in the Biblical world, you experience God's presence by going to a temple. That's where heaven overlaps. present by going to a temple that's over there over the ladder. Now, there are two types of temples described in the Bible.

One is a capital, basically a tent that was built by a Buddhist. And the other was a massive building made by Solomon. And these temples were decorated with fruit trees, and flowers, and images of angels, and all kinds of gold and jewels and stuff. And these are designed to make you feel like you're going back to the garden. And at the center of the temple was a place called Holy of Holies, which was like a hot

spot for God's presence. And how we can go and be with God. But not the best, because the temple also creates problems. So God's space is full of presence and goodness and justice and beauty, but human space is full of sin and injustice and ugliness that results. So how do these spaces overlap? They're so different. They're in conflict with each other.

This was resolved through animal sacrifice. Yeah, that's kind of... What's the name of the sacrifice? Yeah, the idea is this. Animal sacrifices, somehow they abhor the sin when the animal dies in your place. And it creates a clean space, so to speak, where you are now free to enter into the temple

and be in God's presence. Okay, so if I'm an Israelite and I live in Jerusalem, I might be able to be in God's presence. You said the story of the Bible was all up to heaven and earth. Do you think that? Right. So we have to keep going in the story when we come to Jesus in the New Testament.

In the Gospel of John, we hear this claim that God became human in Jesus and made his dwelling among us. Now this word dwelling, it's really curious. Literally it means he settled in a tabernacle among us. And so what John is claiming right here is that Jesus is a temple. He is now the place where heaven and earth overlap.

What's interesting about Jesus is that he is staying in this safe, clean space. He's running around little pockets in heaven where people can be in God's presence, but he's doing it out there in the middle of the world in death. And he's just telling everyone that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And he can pull his followers to pray regularly that God's kingdom come

and that his will be done here on earth, just as it is in heaven. But a lot of people are threatened by Jesus and they kill him, which seems to follow the full plan to reunite them. But we have to go back to a scene earlier

on in Jesus' story where John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, Behold, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So Jesus isn't just talked about at the temple. He's also talked about as being the temple sacrifice. Yeah, so the cross is now the place where Jesus absorbs sin to create a clean space that is not limited by animal sacrifice.

Jesus' sacrifice has the power to keep spreading and spreading and reuniting more and more heaven and earth. And this is all really great, but it leaves one big question behind, which is, what happens when I die? Don't I just fly over to God's face to be with Jesus? when I die. Don't I just fly over to God's face to be with Jesus? Yeah, so a few times in the New Testament, we learn that Christians will be with Jesus in heaven after they die.

But that is not the focus of the Bible story. The focus is on how heaven and earth are being reunited through Jesus and will be completely brought together one day when he returns. So in the book of Revelation, we get this beautiful image of the Garden of Eden, So in the book of Revelation, we get this beautiful image of the Garden of Eden, now in the form of a city,

coming to end the age of sin and death by redeeming all of human history and renewing creation. And God's space and human space completely overlap once again. Okay, so I hope that's helpful and gives you some new framework. But this is the story Jesus sees himself in, and this is what Jesus believes he's bringing into reality, the reunion of heaven and earth. And there's something he's going to do in Jerusalem. That's the key event, his death and his resurrection. And so for Jesus to come in and to begin confronting these leaders,

like of course this is what they're going to bring up. Of course, they're going to bring up the hope of the resurrection. It's the engine driving what Jesus is doing. One of the engines, at least. We'll see another one. So, with all that in mind, let's come back and touch down at a few points in the story. And let's do that. Okay. Who's picking a fight with Jesus? What's the name of this group? Sadducees. They've appeared a time or two before. So they are a group. Here's the best analogy of what I can think of, of what this group would have been like, is like the Church of Scientology in American culture. So very few people, a small number of people are a part of this group. But it so happens that the majority of the people who are in this group are really wealthy and really influential or important people. And so we don't know much about the

Sadducees, but they are mentioned in a handful of other sources in the same period of Jesus. We know that they were made up the wealthy in Jerusalem, and that a number of them were leading priests, and that the chief priest even was a part of this group in Jesus' time, Caiaphas. So, and these, here's what we know about what they believed. They believed that only the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, were sacred scripture. So that was their home base. They didn't believe in the resurrection. They didn't believe in the rebirth of the universe. They believed that the way that humans live on in the world is by having children and keeping the family name alive. No final judgment. When you die, you go to the grave, and that's it. So do your best to

keep the Ten Commandments. And occasionally, God will intervene in history and save people and do things, but for the most part, we're here on our own. That's this group. And so, how convenient, That's this group. And so how convenient, you guys, how convenient is it that the people at the top with the most wealth are precisely those who don't believe that the world needs to undergo a radical change? How convenient is that? I'm being quite serious about that. It's very interesting that the people who would embrace this worldview are precisely those who could afford to, not Jesus. And so they pick this fight with Jesus, and what

do they do? They quote from a law in the Torah, and they're trying to expose how stupid Jesus is, and it just doesn't, it backfires really big time, doesn't it? Because Jesus is not the one who comes off looking stupid. So, they quote from this law, and if you're interested, it's in the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah, chapter 25. And so, it's this law given to the Israelites. So, the ancient Israelites were a tribal farming community. Everything is about family and land. And so, men and women could own land, the patriarch or the matriarch or whatever,

grandpa, grandma, mom or dad. But when a husband died, what would happen is that this family support network would kick in. And so to make sure the widow or any children wouldn't be left to fend for themselves and to make sure the land wouldn't get sold off because of debt or tragedy or something, the wife would get, the widow would get remarried back into the family. That's how they did it. And if they didn't have children,

the family name would continue and so on. You guys can read the law. So they take this as a given, and they say, Jesus, we know you value the laws of the Torah, so we know you care about this law. Now, just think about what a ridiculous soap opera this law is going to create if your silly idea about the resurrection is really true. You guys with me? I mean, do I need to read the story again, the seven brothers thing? I mean, it's so silly. And so they're like, does God contradict himself? God's going to create a world where these silly stories about seven brides and seven brothers, right? They're trying to show Jesus how silly it is to believe this hope of the resurrection. They make themselves

look stupid in the process. And so Jesus actually ends up shaming them. And he says, you guys are stupid for two reasons. Two reasons. He says, first of all, you don't get what the scriptures are about. You have no concept of what they're about if you don't embrace the hope of the resurrection. And you lack imagination in God's power. You don't have a concept of what God is capable or what kind of universe we're living in. This is Jesus' two responses. You don't know the scriptures.

You don't understand God's power. And these two answers are so simple and so profound, they've been spinning my brain for weeks now. So allow me to hopefully spin yours too. Let's start with a second answer, because I actually think that'll give us a framework for what he's doing. When Jesus wants to demonstrate the hope of the resurrection from the Bible, where does he go? Look at verse 31. About the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you? And then he quotes. Do you see that right there? I'm the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, if you have a little footnote in your Bible, where is he quoting from? From the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 3. Very intentional on Jesus' part. Nothing's ever random with Jesus. So, remember, what books of the Bible do the Sadducees hold as sacred scripture? First five books of the Bible. So Jesus could have appealed to the book of Daniel. He could have appealed to the book of Isaiah. But he doesn't. He goes on their turf, right? He goes to the books of the Bible that they acknowledge. So he goes to the book of Exodus. And the story that he turns to, it's a very famous story. You probably have seen the movie. It's the story of the burning bush, Moses and the burning bush. And it's this moment, crucial moment in the story,

where Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, he's enslaved the Israelites. He's killing all their baby boys. He's grinding them to death in slavery. And so God appears to Moses and he says, no more. and slavery. And so God appears to Moses and he says, no more. This is going to stop. And I'm going to send you to go be the one who will set my people free. And Moses says, no, bad idea. I don't really want to do that. And God says, you don't really have a choice in the matter. So then Moses says, well, who do I represent? Like in the name of what God am I going to go confront the king of Egypt? And this is how God answers. I'm the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. And Jesus concludes from this,

So God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. living. So God is doing a new act of justice, confronting evil in his world because of his commitment to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If God is still active in the world, making good on his promises, then that means they are not dead but alive? Would you have come to Jesus' conclusion from reading the story of the burning bush? My thought is no. And that's because we think too small. We think too small. Whenever Jesus is quoting any line of the scriptures, he's got the whole story, the big context in his mind. So what does it mean for God to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And it's actually really, really important that God is that God, that that's the God we're referring to.

And as a follower of Jesus still today, it's extremely important that I recognize that that's the God who's revealed to me in Jesus. it's extremely important that I recognize that that's the God who's revealed to me in Jesus. So think through how the story of the Bible works, the story by the which that these guys would recognize as sacred scripture. So the story of Genesis begins with all of, well, actually it doesn't begin, it begins really awesome. And it begins with God giving immense responsibility and authority to humanity. And what does humanity do with its responsibility and authority, its privileged place in the world? We do what humans do, right? As far back as we can tell, we redefine good and evil on our own terms to our own self-advantage. We're stupid, we're short-sighted, and we're selfish. And so we ruin God's good world. And that story

gets explored in depth in the first chapters of Genesis. What is the God of the Bible's response to a world of people who are ruining each other and ruining his world? And Genesis chapter 12 marks a key moment in the story. It's that God chooses this guy, Abraham, and makes a permanent, eternal promise to him that somehow, through this guy's family, through Isaac and Jacob, he's going to do something in human history to defeat evil, to restore his divine blessing to the very world that's rebelling against him. Who is the God of the Bible? He's apparently the God that loves to bless his enemies. And I think I heard Jesus mention something about that once too. So he's reflecting on the story. And so for God to define

himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it's the God who's on a mission to defeat death and to defeat evil and the tragedy of human sin and spiritual evil and all that results from it. That's what this story is all about. And so whatever that means, it means that the hope, if you believe this story is true and you believe that this is who God is, then you believe that death is not the final word for you and for our world. That the story ends with new birth, with the rebirth of all things, and with the born-againness, the new birth of humanity, if we humble ourselves and be willing to undergo it. That's what the story is, and I think that's what Jesus is getting at here. If you believe in the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

you believe in the resurrection, that God's on a mission to defeat evil and death in his world and remove it, to remove it. So he says you're stupid for that reason. You just don't get what the story of the Bible is about. That's what he says to the Sadducees. Not you, the Sadducees. So the second answer, or the second part. So the Sadducees, why do they think this is a silly

idea? They apparently think the rebirth of the universe and the rebirth of humans is stupid and silly because, well, it just means that things are just going to continue on. Like, God will do something amazing and defeat evil, and then apparently we'll all just, you know, you'll still have your same hairdo and whatever, wear the same clothes and know the same people, and like, it's just going to continue on forever, except we won't die. That's apparently their idea of the resurrection that they reject. And so they make up this silly story. And Jesus is just like, sheesh, you lack imagination. You lack imagination in God's power. And so here's what he says. He says, at the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Rather, they'll be like the angels in heaven. What on earth does that mean? This is one of those sayings of Jesus

that I puzzled over for many, many years. Anybody else? What does this mean? Now, what he does say, whatever it means to be like angels, he said, like angels. Not you become angels, you become like angels. No wings for you. I'm sorry, right? So where that idea came from, I don't know. But that's not a, Jesus didn't think that you're going to get wings or anything like that. So what does that, there's no marriage. So like the angels.

What does this mean? Okay, let's back up. And let's understand what he's saying here through his own metaphor of birth. Right? The being born again, to enter into the new world, the new creation, you must be born again. And that the universe itself is going to undergo a new birth. What does that mean? Well, let's explore it. I'm going to put

an image up here that I certainly hope you've seen at some point in your life or education. It's a standard chart. I think it's called like Carnegie's stages of human development, something like that. But there you go. It's the basic rundown of how a human embryo and then a fetus develops in the womb. This is all before birth. Now, just, so just stop and look at that. There's a whole bunch of you, most of you, I hope, if you know what's good for you, you're going to go see Star Wars in the next week or two. And you're going to spend a couple hours living in this wonderful science fiction universe that seems, you know,

truth is stranger than fiction kind of thing. And it's a wonderful universe. And you're going to forget that the universe that you actually inhabit is even more strange and remarkable than the one that you're going to live in for two hours. You guys, look at that. You guys, look at that. Do you, if you're a human, which I think all of you are, so that you were that. You were, look at three weeks. Look at three weeks. That was you. You

existed in that form right there. Just spin your brain on that. We forget it because we're like, surely I've always been this way. No, you haven't. You were once that. Our memories are so short this way. So we were that. Was that you?

When you existed in that form, was that you? Yes. Yes. Is it the same you that's sitting in the chair right now? Well, yes and no. I mean, probably all the cells that made up that embryo at three weeks have been traded out, and you shed them off with dandruff and all that other stuff. But it's you.

The same consciousness, the same person that developed. So it's you. It's you, but it's a new and different you, but yet the same you. There have been stages of transformation that so radically changed you, but it's still you. So let's just think about what's going here in the development before birth. If you could sit down and have a conversation with 38 week old baby right there, right? Like right before it's about to be born, and you're trying to tell it how wonderful pizza and Star Wars are, right. So just like, there's no categories. There are going to be things that this human will experience after being born for which it has no framework or categories whatsoever, given its experience so far. There will be other things that will continue on from this stage to after birth. For example, this is

interesting. Look up at the picture and take a deep breath with me. So you just used your lungs. When did your lungs start developing? So the experts tell us between four and five weeks, the cell structures that make up the tube, I think it's the bronchial tube or whatever, like that starts like getting put together and it develops into the lungs. So you're developing an organ very early on. It completes, you know, formation somewhere around 32 to 34 weeks. So just stop and think about that. You just used an organ that your life depends on. And you've had that organ from the first couple weeks of your existence. But what were your lungs doing for the months that they were developing

in the womb? Just think about that question. What were your lungs doing? Were they inhaling and exhaling? Yes, they were. And what were they pumping in and out? Liquid. You guys, the world universe is so strange. You used to live in liquid. You breathed liquid for months and months. Isn't that strange? If you were to try and live in liquid now, it will kill you. But not, there's some, something happened at the moment of birth, such a radical transformation that you're, it's still you, but a completely different, yet the same you. You with me here? And when your lungs underwent that transformation, what happened is that you coughed out the last bit of fluid right as you emerged.

And then what did you do? You inhaled, and what was the response to you using your lungs for the real purpose for which they've been forming this whole time? What did you think about that? You didn't like it. You screamed. You screamed really loud because it's really uncomfortable and foreign. And then also in that same moment, so you haven't been breathing oxygen, you've been living in fluid and so on. And so what have you been getting your oxygen for this whole

process right here? Well, you used to have a tube going into your stomach, a fleshy tube, right, Well, you used to have a tube going into your stomach, a fleshy tube, right, that supplied all of your oxygen and all of your food and nutrients and so on. You lived by this thing for months and months and months, and then in just a few minutes, that life-giving organ became totally unnecessary. You just cut that thing off, right? It's so strange. It's so strange. right? It's so strange. It's so strange. You and I all went through a few minutes of our history where our bodies underwent radical transformation. Is it the same you?

Why do you think Jesus used this metaphor to talk about the future of the universe? this metaphor to talk about the future of the universe? And why do you think Jesus used this metaphor for what needs to happen to you and I if we're going to inhabit that new universe? It's very intentional. And you can spend your brain on this for a long time. There are some things that will be new and unimaginable to us, apparently. Just like pizza and Star Wars are unimaginable, right? To 38-week-old right there. There are some things that will continue, like your lungs, but they will undergo such a radical transformation

that you can't even conceive. What you realize is there are things being woven inside of us right now. We have no concept of their purpose or value. But then all of a sudden, the moment birth takes place, your lungs come into their own, and they're doing what they're made to do. So there's some things about us that will continue, but there's something about that transformation where it's like, we'll see what it was all about and what all of this was really for. And there will be some things that will come to an end, like the cord that sustained your life for months and months.

And Jesus apparently thinks that marriage is one of those things that will end. Why? So, what do we know about what Jesus thinks about marriage? Well, we do know what he thinks. He talked about it quite a lot back in chapter 19. And we don't have time to unpack it now, but for Jesus, marriage, procreation, sex, it's all bound together. So Jesus' view of marriage, it's derived from pages one and two of the Bible, that these gendered opposites, male and a female, they resist their biological impulse to go reproduce with many other people, and you make this covenant

against that impulse to bind yourselves to one and become one. And then you consummate that covenant love through sex, and then these fluids mix. I trust you're not learning anything right now, right? These fluids mix and new humans emerge out of these mixing of gels and fluids. It's so strange. It's so strange. And Jesus says this image is God. It's an image of God. That somehow these two others coming together to covenant their love to one another, and out of that love, new life is generated and created, is an image of God. And what do we know

about Jesus' view of God? We know that he views God's character as a being of eternal, self-giving, creative love. And that a whole part of becoming his disciple is just believing that and recognizing that. And recognizing that we live in that being's universe and that we exist as an expression of that being's creative love. And that when human beings marry to make new humans, we're looking at an embodied symbol of that reality of the creative love of God. Now, does Jesus think that marriage is the only way that human beings image the love of God to each other? No. Remember what Jesus never was?

Married. He was never married. And unless you're prepared to say, Jesus did not image God's love to the world, which is a stupid thing to say. So Jesus uniquely in the history of religious teachers elevated the single unmarried life as an honorable, even desirable way to live as a human being. Why? Because for Jesus, marriage and sex are not the meaning of life. In Jesus' mind, it's a temporary stage in the universe's story. It's a temporary stage in the human story. Whatever the rebirth of the world means, it's a world where God has banished death. And so it's a world where the creation of new humans through sex, like it's not going to work like that. It's not going to work. It's going to be different. Marriage is a social institution that serves the purpose to symbolize the covenant love of God, and that arrangement will be completely different. Try and teach a dog algebra, right?

We just don't have categories for it. Try and give us categories for what that new creation is like. Notice that Jesus doesn't say that married love will not be a part of the new creation. Just marriage, the institution. Apparently Jesus envisions the universe where God's love is at the center of everything. And we know that this was Jesus' view of the universe because when he's asked about the meaning of life, conveniently in the very next story that Josh is going to unpack next week, Jesus says, here's the meaning of life.

It's love. To love God, to know God's love, how he's acted to rescue and redeem us despite our sin and failure, and to love God in return, and we do that by loving our neighbor. It's love. Jesus does not envision a new universe without love. For Jesus, love is like, it's what it's about. So here's, I feel like at the limits of my language right here, but I'm just going to try as I land the plane.

Get into your mind the person that you care about the most in this world. Just get a, fix them right there. Maybe you're sitting next to them. It's a family member, maybe a child, maybe a spouse. And there are moments where your love for that person brings out the best in you. Right? These acts of just like the compassion, the care, the acts of self-sacrifice, of serving them. Love has a way of bringing out the absolute best in human beings. But you and I also know that we have significant handicaps when it comes to our love. Right? It's partial. It's conditional. We'll love the same person one moment, and then we'll, like, snub them the next moment because they don't do what we want them to do. It's conditional. Our love is exclusive. We

love people who are like ourselves more than we love people who aren't like ourselves. And we live in a world where there are millions and millions and billions of people who feel absolutely unwelcome in the universe because they've never actually known the true love of anybody. And for Jesus, the biblical story, what this is all about, is imagine a world where your handicaps to love are removed. Imagine a world where there's nobody who doesn't feel at home. When I committed to love my wife, and now I love these two little cavemen, my little humans that I live with, and like,

that's a lot of, it's a lot of work. It's like, I'm trying to do that, and then I've got friends and coworkers around me and some neighbors that I live by, and that's it. I'm maxed. Peter will love to be your friend. I just, I'm maxed right now. I just, like, there are severe limits to my love. Can you try and imagine a world

where those limits are removed and where your love for one person doesn't mean that somebody else has to go unloved. It means that everybody's welcome. It means that everybody's loved. And it seems to me you put the whole picture together. That's what the rebirth of all things is all about. And for Jesus, this isn't just idle speculation. For Jesus, the whole

point is that the kingdom of heaven come here on earth as it is in heaven. Like, the whole point is now, this isn't speculation. This is like something that we're called to participate in in the moment, which is why he will say in the very next story, what's the meaning of life? You love God. You love your neighbor. Marriage, you know, comes and it'll go, apparently. There are all kinds of other things that seem so vital to us now that, like our umbilical cord, will pass. But there are some parts of us that exist now and that will fully be awakened when Jesus' healing justice remakes our world. There are three things that remain, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. So let me land the plane. I don't know what you need to hear from this. There might be some of us who are here, and we, part of what's difficult about following Jesus is actually believing that you are wanted and that you're welcome

in the universe, that you have a place here and a purpose, and that you were loved by your creator and that you're here for a reason. And that you're loved. There's some of us for whom that is extremely difficult to believe. And so as we come to take the bread and the cup here, that's a part of the hope of the resurrection. Is to believe that that's true now. And to believe that God's commitment and love for our world is going to rebirth our world into a world where God's love is at the center. And there's some of us, as we eat the symbol of the bread and the cup, we eat the symbol of his love. We need to hear that in the present and for our future.

There are some others of us who are here, and that's not your issue. Your issue, like mine, is that you're apathetic, and you're lazy, and you know that you're loved by Jesus, but you're fickle with how you reflect that love out to others. And there are lots of people in your family and at work who feel unwelcome in the universe, and we're not doing anything about it. And that's a failure to follow Jesus, it seems to me. It's a failure of imagination. I think Jesus would want us to imagine your workplace or imagine your family as a place where everyone is loved, where everyone is loved, and to pray that into reality for tomorrow and the next day and the next. And so as you take the bread and the cup, let's ask Jesus for courage and boldness to love our neighbors as we receive his love. Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible

Podcast. We're going to be back with our next episode, exploring more of the gospel according Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. We're going to be back with our next episode, exploring more of the gospel according to Matthew. So we'll see you next time. Thank you.