Ben Brinkerhoff - Who Do You Say That I Am? - Class 1

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:03

   Thank you and and good morning brothers and sisters feels like I was just here and it’s really a pleasure to bring back. I bring with me the love of Alyssa and the love of brother Ari, sister Ahava, sister Asha and Petra as well. They they wish they could be here with you. They have many wonderful friends amongst this group of beautiful people over here and they would have liked to have been with you, but unfortunately choosing between you and Athens, you lost and understandably. And they, they feel like they can hear dad’s talk another time, which is also understandable. I didn’t mean to confuse you about the title. It’s just that when Dan asked for that title, I hadn’t written any of the talks yet.

2. 0:51

   So I was back and forth back and forth to Dan on text going what should I call actually the first title I suggested Dan Dan’s like, I don’t like that title. I think he came up with the title. And then and then as I as I began to do the study, I saw the excitational arc of the study riddles in this chapter. Now you may not appreciate right away with those riddles are because we haven’t read chapter 16 yet. But as you read chapter 16, if you just read it with fresh eyes, you come across lots of questions that you’d naturally want to get answers for.

3. 1:26

   Let me give you a few of them because they help us form an outline for our study. So our first study is a sign from heaven. And the question that we’re going to be trying to answer is why were the Jews asking for a sign? OK, that’s set to the second study because the first and second study are really combined. Because it turns out when I accepted the invitation to Pinjar, I had no idea there were six studies in exhortation. And that’s a record, by the way.

4. 1:55

   So congratulations for you. 7 studies in four days. So, so I, I basically took the first study and I stretched it across 2 studies. Right. So the second study is the sign of the prophet Jonah. Why was this the only sign they’d be given? OK, you, you see how you’re start forming a question.

5. 2:18

   The third the the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus says to beware it. Well, what’s that leaven? And what does that have to do with baskets and fragments? And, and why does Jesus say how many baskets you took up among the 4000, the 5000, as if that’s a conclusive answer to the question. And he doesn’t actually give us the answer. How about this, you know, what is the rock on which he builds the ecclesia?

6. 2:45

   What are the keys? What does it mean to bind on earth and be bound in heaven or loose on earth and be loose in heaven? Because the misinterpretation of that passage is profound. What are the gates of Hades? Why does he deliver this message and says we of Philippi, how does the Catholic Church understand and perhaps distort these passages? And what should we as Christian Developians understand about that?

7. 3:11

   And lastly, what does it really mean to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God? And I just put forward to young people, especially young brothers here sitting in the first row amongst others that and when you begin good Bible study, you ask questions. That’s it. You, you open up the word and you look at that, you go, huh, I wonder what that’s about.

8. 3:33

   And you’re and you’re right down the question. This is what Bible study is. We can make it more complicated than that. We can make it. We can make it more more difficult perhaps, but but at its heart, it’s looking at something, even looking at something you think you understand and asking yourself a question and then going and seeking for an answer.

9. 3:52

   And this Bible study is going to be very much one where we simply ask ourselves questions like the ones on the on the screen behind you and we look for answers. OK, so let’s look at Matthew chapter 16 and verses 1 to 4 where we are immediately confronted with our first question. The Pharisees and the Sadducees came and to test him and they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

10. 4:22

    He answered and said when it’s evening you say it will be fair weather for the skies red, and in the morning it will be stormy weather for the skies red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, says Jesus, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah.

11. 4:50

    OK, so why are they asking for a sign from heaven? Now to answer this question, I want to give us some background on Matthew 16 and it’s parallel in Matthew 8 because what I want to do is to understand what was on the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ right before this encounter.

12. 5:09

    Again, I don’t want to take this encounter right out of context. So you don’t have you don’t have in your working memory what was going on in the Lord Jesus Christ’s mind and in the disciples mind just before he gets asked this question in down the Nuthora Magdala right? So, So what we’re going to do here is we’re going to 1st just put it in context within Jesus entire ministry. So what we have on the board behind us is we have the the four passovers that the Lord we’re told about in scripture. And amongst these 4 Passovers, of course, the last one is his crucifixion and the third one is the feeding of the 5000 recorded in Mark 6 and John 6.

13. 5:51

    So, so feeding of the 4000, Matthew 16, as you can see, it comes right in between the 3rd and the 4th Passover. So what I’m suggesting to you is it’s probably late summer if the Passover is in, well, listen, the Passover would be like this weekend, you know, in, in, in early April or something along those lines. If that is when the Passover is, then by the time we’re at the feeding of the 4000, I think we’re in late summer or something along those lines.

14. 6:19

    So maybe there’s as much as, but maybe not quite six months of time between the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000. And as we read in Mark Chapter 7 and 8, the feeding of the 4000 happens immediately before he’s asked this question. OK, So what I’m going to do now is I’m going to take just this section and I’m going to blow that section out so that we can see and fill in what’s happening in this little section of the Lord’s ministry.

15. 6:48

    So let’s do that, OK? And what I’m doing here is I’m going to divide up the narrative between when he’s in Gentile areas and when he’s in Jewish areas, OK? And what we’re going to do is we’re also going to try to follow that on the map here on the screen, you can see that it begins with the feeding of the 5000.

16. 7:08

    You guys know that was in Beseda, right? And Beseda is sitting right there on the border between Galilee and the tetrarchy of Philip. But I think primarily a Jewish area. So we’re going to we’re going to mark that as being in the Jewish area down here. OK. And So what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at Mark to help us follow this narrative because Mark has kind of a Workman like fashion in which he describes the narrative between the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000.

17. 7:35

    So we’re going to follow Mark’s narrative, which is why I had that read as an introductory reading. And we’re just going to follow and see what’s going on in the Lord Jesus Christ. And on a hint, it’s going to be pretty important what’s happening when he gets in gentile areas and what’s happening when he’s in Jewish areas. Now firstly, as we begin this, I just want to begin with with with something you all you already know, which is after the feeding the 5000, what was the reaction of the Jews after he talked about the bread from heaven in John chapter 6. And we know the answer when we begin this period is that there’s a mass rejection of the Lord between the disciples that that found his words hard to bear and understand and didn’t accept them.

18. 8:21

    And Jesus even turned to his disciples and said, are you going to go as well? And Peter says who they encounter him. I think it’s just that because look, look at this word and I mean, we, we think the word and is not very important, but what it is at its heart is a linking idea, right? It just means that these two ideas are very closely associated.

19. 8:44

    And when chapter 16 begins with the word and what do you really mean? It comes hard on the heels of the end of chapter 15. And, and, and, and what we really read because we don’t, we don’t know anything that Jesus accomplished in Magdala. What did he do there? We don’t know what he did there. There’s nothing recorded.

20. 9:02

    They, the only thing that’s recorded for us that happened in Mount Dawa is this incident. And I suggest to you the reason that is, it’s because nothing else happened there. It’s, it’s like the boat comes in the shore, Then then someone says that’s that, that that’s Jesus of Nazareth. And then, oh, that’s Jesus. And then suddenly the scribes and Pharisees are summoned to the shore and then they’re, they confront Jesus right away. That’s how the text reads that right when he gets there and the Pharisees and Sadducees come to test him and ask for a sign from heaven almost immediately.

21. 9:42

    Now it’s worth remarketing by the way, we see Pharisees and Sadducees. You might just say ho ho, Pharisees and Sadducees. Clearly these two people that oppose these two groups, I should say that oppose Jesus Christ. These groups didn’t like each other at all. They did not have much time for each other, these two groups, this is one of the few occasions before the last week of the Lord Jesus Christ life where we see these two groups come together. Now one of those occasions where you see the Pharisees, Zedges come together is maybe just a couple, maybe in Mark 3 it’s implied, but it’s not really.

22. 10:18

    They’re cooperating. This incident in Matthew 16 and the other only incident that they seem to get together and work together before the last week of the Lord Jesus Christ life is in John Chapter 7. And I point that out because John Chapter 7 has an interesting language which I want to look at now. It’s hard to know when to put John chapters. Well, we know when to put it.

23. 10:44

    It’s but it we don’t know when John Chapter 7 appears within the context of all the things we’ve been looking at in Mark because Mark doesn’t record the visit that John Chapter 7 records when Jesus goes to Jerusalem. So we don’t know exactly where to put it right. But but interesting it’s talking about much the same thing in John 7. So this I’m just putting forward to you that John 7 happens at the same time.

24. 11:07

    All the things we’ve been looking at where it happens, I’m not sure. Could happen at the end, could happen somewhere in the middle or towards the towards the end, could happen just before the feeding of the 4000. I don’t think so, but perhaps we just don’t know exactly. But the point is, is that something is said in John 7 which is relevant to the story we’ve been looking at in Mark 7 and it’s this. In John 7, Jesus is in Jerusalem, and many of the people believed in him.

25. 11:36

    And they said, when the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done? And the Pharisees heard the crowd thus muttering about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees. Now again, that is one of the few times we see these two groups cooperating. The chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him, and you say to yourself, why do they appear to be working together in this instance when Jesus is in Jerusalem in John Chapter 7? I suggest to you is that they’re both threatened and they appear to be especially triggered by the idea that Jesus is doing signs, don’t they?

26. 12:27

    That seems to be the evidence that people are looking at that this man actually might be the Messiah. And so they come to Jesus. And interestingly, Jesus says, are you going to seek for me and not find me where I am? You cannot come. And how do they respond? Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? Now, this is one of those undesigned Scripture coincidences.

27. 12:50

    John records nothing of Jesus going up to Decapolis. He records nothing of Jesus going to Tyre and Sidon, but clearly they know that’s where he’s been.

28. 13:05

    Even though Mark records it, John doesn’t record. I have a sniff of it because you have John 6, you know, everyone going away after defeating the 5000. The next thing you read about John 7, he goes to Jerusalem. We have nothing about what what Mark 7 records in John, yet clearly they know that he’s been teaching among the Greeks.

29. 13:24

    In fact, he’s now kind of famous for it. And the other thing this tells us is they won’t go there. So why does Jesus go among the Greeks?

30. 13:34

    In part, he goes among the Greeks because that’s where they cannot come and they know they cannot come there. Why can’t they go there? Because they think they’re defiled by things like unwashed hands. So as soon as he has his argument about unwashed hands, he’s like, you know what? I’m going to go somewhere, you cannot come. But what I want to point this out is not necessarily for that, although that’s an interesting undesigned scripts or coincidence, which is just worth pointing out. It’s that the signs.

31. 14:06

    It’s the signs, you see, the signs appear to be evidence that he is who he is. And so they’re getting together going. We got to do something about these signs. People are believing signs and and they don’t think they’re really signs from heaven. So if we’re going to trap him, we got to trap him concerning the signs. Now, it’s just remarkable.

32. 14:30

    It’s more remarkable than you think that these two groups are working together. It shows how threatened they are because they didn’t like each other at all. They disagreed on many, many levels. And it’s hard to get this in the New Testament, but it’s a lot more clear when you go to Josephus. If you go to Josephus’s writings and he talks about Jewish society in his time and he talks about these different groups, you understand that there’s real animosity between these groups because they represent very different demographics and they and, and, and stratas of society and they have different beliefs.

33. 15:05

    Like the Pharisees believe in the oral law, but the Sadducees don’t. The Pharisees believe in resurrection afterlife. The Sadducees don’t. The Pharisees try to represent the lower classes and middle classes. The, the, the Sadducees don’t care at all about the middle classes and lower classes. They represent the aristocracy and the wealthy. The Pharisees were, were teaching in synagogues.

34. 15:26

    The Sadducees had nothing to do with synagogues. It’s all about the temple for them. The Pharisees were not very much connected to the Romans, but the Sadducees very much were. They did not agree on many things at all. There. They had a real antagonism towards one another. The fact that they’re cooperating, as Jesus tells you this one fact overwhelmingly, is that they’re both threatened

35. 15:51

    because this man, well, people think he might be the Messiah. If he’s the Messiah, we’re both losing out. So they put aside their differences and they come together for this purpose. Now the Pharisees says he’s knew something. They knew that Jesus had performed miracle after miracle and sign after sign. They could not gainsay it. It was clear and obvious to everyone. You can’t, we cannot feed 5000 people and people not know about it.

36. 16:23

    You can’t heal the lame and and the blind in the in the maimed and the deaf and it not be well known. So what are they going to do about this? What’s going to be their strategy? How are they going to navigate this issue that that clearly this man could perform many signs and the signs appear to be evidence to the people that he actually might be the Messiah.

37. 16:43

    What are they going to do about that? Aha. They say they’re very clever. So they develop a line of attack. Here’s the line of attack. We’re going to go back and ask for a bigger, bolder, better sign, a sign from heaven. Now, what do they mean by that? Well, we’re going to ask for a sign as conclusively from heaven, a sign which is so clear and so overwhelming that there’s going to be no doubt whatsoever that this man not, we’re not, we’re not talking about a casual sign like a man born blind sees again.

38. 17:23

    That’s just, well, that’s just that’s just that’s just table stakes Messiah talk, right? That’s not that’s not good enough, right? We’re not talking about a man who is sick of a palsy and then rising up again. That’s not good enough. No, no, no, no. We’re talking about a big bold sign. Now, the strategy is this. Let’s say that Jesus fails to produce a sign. Aha, they got him because he’s a fraud. We asked for a sign, couldn’t produce it. But then of course, they think to themselves, you know, this man’s pretty good at signs.

39. 17:59

    What are we going to do if he actually gives us a sign? Because you can’t. You know, I heard once about lawyers that when you’re in a trial and you’re a lawyer and someone’s on the stand, you never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Ever heard that? Well, if these men were nothing if not lawyers.

40. 18:21

    So they never ask a question they don’t know the answer to. So what’s going to what’s, what are they going to do? If Jesus actually produces a sign? What are they going to do then? Ha ha, well if he produces a sign, where’s he going to claim this from? PLS above. They can’t lose.

41. 18:40

    You see, to them this is a no lose question. No matter what Jesus does, they have an answer. So, So what I want to suggest to you is when they ask Jesus for a sign, this is not a genuine question. You, you follow that. It’s not like they’re actually, you know, young people. They’re not asking for a sign thinking that if he actually produced something, they might believe. That’s not that’s not the exchange happening here in in Matthew 16 verse one.

42. 19:11

    They’re not asking a sign so that if Jesus produced something, they go he’s he’s done something. We’re actually going to believe. That’s not what’s happening. No matter what Jesus does, they’re not going to believe.

43. 19:27

    So how is Jesus going to respond? Well, he responds by asking them to consider the sky. Now let’s look at this together. Well, here we go. The point of these last quest graphics were is that it’s just that if you look at Jewish history, there’s a lot of context. I’m going to, I’m trying to try to walk somewhere where Dan’s camera can’t find me.

44. 20:01

    Is that, am I going to achieve that, Dan? Am I there? Yet? There’s lots of context in Jewish history where Jesus had asked for a sign. Or the Jews had had been given a sign, a sign from heaven. I’m just like to suggest to you when, when they’re at Mount Sinai, there are plenty of signs from heaven. But whilst those signs from heaven are being given by God clearly in the in the, in the clouds and the thundering and the lightning.

45. 20:31

    So in so far as they’re so scared that they don’t want to approach into the mountain anymore or hear God’s voice, they’re doing this. That lot of good that sign was doing, wasn’t it? I mean, or, or how about, how about Elijah calling down fire in heaven then seems to be a sign. You know, I, it’s funny, when I want to talk locally, I kind of do the southern accent a little bit. I don’t know what about the southern accent makes me sound like I just represent the people, right. So you just got to forgive me.

46. 21:09

    Sometimes I get some giddy up in my voice, but calling down fire from heaven, right? Did did that change the people? And I just want, did signs from heaven do any good in the history of this people? Kind of funny, they think the sign from heaven is going to do some good now, right?

47. 21:36

    It hadn’t done much good before. So Jesus is going to to give them an an analogy of whether now, of course, this I remember Jesus is being asked a no win question. He cannot win this question. No matter what he does, faith will not be resolved. He couldn’t do a sign and then suddenly they’re going to have faith.

48. 21:55

    So this is not a genuine question. So Jesus can’t answer it as if it’s a genuine question. But of course, Jesus having the Spirit knew this. So he says, he answered and said unto them, when it’s evening, you say, it will be fair weather for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red.

49. 22:17

    And lowering you hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky, but can you not discern the sign of the times? So what does Jesus mean by this? So in order to understand this, you don’t really need to understand this, but this is one of those things you look at and you’re like, what?

50. 22:35

    What is up with the red skies and the and the Jewish weather? So I just wanted to explain this. Maybe you’re curious like me. So, but it’s not really critical that you get this bit. So OK in Israel, where does rain come from? Which direction?

51. 22:54

    It comes from the West, right. It comes from the Mediterranean Sea. OK. So in fact, you know that because we were an Elijah on Mount Carmel. He asks as a cycle. Look out over the sea and and see if you see anything, right? Don’t, don’t look towards the South or the north, or certainly don’t look towards the east. You’re never going to find rain from that direction ever, right? Look towards the West and look for a cloud. And of course that’s what he does now. A red and lowering sky means that the sun is shining up from the on the locales coming from the West. So I want you to imagine clouds coming in from the West, the sun rising in the east, the sun’s light, the first of the lights of day shining up on those clouds, right? And making a beautiful sunrise full of red and colors. Why?

52. 23:51

    Because you need the clouds to do that, right? And, and So what you have is a little bit of a scenario like this, right? And when you see something like this now, I, I don’t, I don’t expect any of you to be meteorologists in the room. Are there any meteorologists in the room? OK, My, my friend, brother Ezra 11’s a meteorologist. So if you know, there’s, there’s certainly, there certainly are some in the brotherhood.

53. 24:14

    OK, So, but if you saw that, would, would you say, you say it rains on the horizon? You got to be too smart to to know that pretty. I just want to I want to put forward to this idea, as that’s obvious.

54. 24:32

    Now I’m going to show you another red sky. I want you to tell me if when you see that red sky, if you think rain’s on the horizon. OK, what about this think it’s going to rain now. Now, if I if I see a red sky at sunset, it doesn’t mean rain. I see red side sunset.

55. 24:55

    What that means is that we’ve had an east wind that’s kicked up a lot of dust and the dust is all throughout the atmosphere. And so I’m seeing a red sky at sunset. What that means is that we’ve had an east wind. Now you know enough of the Bible, I’m sure to know that east winds mean there’s not going to be any rain at all.

56. 25:16

    In fact, the east wind is famous. Think about Joseph’s dreams. What? When Pharaoh’s crops get get destroyed in his dream, Where, why did they get destroyed? What happened? There was an east wind, right? In fact, that’s what the east wind looks like meteorologically. You see that? You see all the dust in the atmosphere there. So this wind picks up over the desert, grabs a lot of dust, and you see it.

57. 25:42

    You can see it just pours out over over gallowing right now that’s going to make your sky look very, very red at sun at sunset. Now the point the point is the point is that these pictures are obvious.

58. 26:01

    They got to be too smart to know what the weather’s going to be like. So the point young people, the point brothers and sisters, and this is a a quote about the east wind. The point is this, that the Pharisees and Sadducees, Saul, could see the sky and they didn’t just observe what was it’s hot.

59. 26:30

    It’s not hot, it’s rainy. They didn’t observe what was. They could observe what’s coming. They could look at the sky and they knew what it meant.

60. 26:44

    Anyone could know what it is at the moment. That’s not the point. The point is to know what’s coming based on what you see. Only a fool wouldn’t be able to interpret such obvious signs in the sky. They knew looking at the sign in the sky, it’d be obvious what the future was regarding the weather.

61. 27:11

    So the Pharisees, as Sadducees, they saw Jesus miracles, they saw the withered hand restored, the lame man walk, the leper restored clean. The difference was that they didn’t know what those things meant. But do you know who did? The Gentiles knew. The Gentiles knew what they meant. The Gentiles knew what the signs meant.

62. 27:37

    This man’s from God, the Pharisees saw the same signs. This man’s not from God. These signs are from another source. So let me just drop draw this class to a close because this class is is really setting up our next study. Now I don’t know what signs God is giving you some some people see signs in different things.

63. 28:05

    Some people see signs perhaps in in Israel restored to the land, and they see that the miracle of that as being a sign. Some people would would look at the stars of the heaven and they’d see the the manifold wonders of God and they’d see that this is a sign of an intelligent and creator God.

64. 28:27

    Some, some people would look at the mathematical precision of the universe. The fact that universe can’t be described with mathematics means that there’s intelligence behind it, and in fact the finite nature of the balance between all the forces of nature what itself suggests that there must be intelligence behind what’s happening in nature.

65. 28:53

    Maybe you see signs personally, circumstances that have happened in your life, or the lives of those you love and care for, and you see those signs. You see signs, brothers and sisters, but the question is not whether you see the sign. Even the Pharisees and the Sadducees solve the sign.

66. 29:20

    What do the signs mean? What power do you attribute the signs to? Is it? Is it God? Is it something baser? Perhaps? Maybe you even challenge God? I need a bigger, bolder, better sign. God. You see the signs you’ve given me, the scriptures and nature and and prophecy fulfilled, Those aren’t good enough? No, no, no, God.

67. 30:05

    I need a sign from heaven. I need something more. I need something greater, something more definite. So the problem isn’t observing a sign, brothers and sisters. The problem is knowing what the sign means.

68. 30:21

    And if you know what the sign means, do you know what you know? You know what comes next because a sign gives you information. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and if he’s the Messiah, then what comes next is that he returns to the earth and you and I are accountable whether or not we believe that we did something about it.

69. 30:50

    So the difficulty for us, I think is very similar to the difficulty of the Pharisees and Sadducees. See, they’re in positions of power and influence. If Jesus is the Messiah, the problem with that is that they lose something. And I find when I speak to young people, or I find the people that are resisting baptism, the problem with baptism isn’t really a lack of signs.

70. 31:13

    The problem with baptism is often what it means, the implication. It means. It means there’s a choice. I got to let go of something. Maybe I have to let go of relationship choices. Maybe I have to let go of, of career opportunities. Maybe, maybe I have to let go of, of freedom to, to live and pursue the things that in, in my life, my heart feels to be things like it’s calling me to pursue.

71. 31:43

    Maybe I have to put down some of my treasures, whether I hold those treasures secretly or openly. You know, there’s, there’s a cost of believing it. And sometimes those of us that are a little bit older than the truth and we’ve made we’ve made some of those sacrifices. And then in retrospect, we go, that wasn’t any cost at all.

72. 32:00

    We look back at those things and we look back at them and we go, well, that was dung compared to what I the benefits are received in the truth. But that’s us. We almost can’t relate to the person who has to and be at the initial point of making that decisions. I just point forward to you. Two people can see the same sign and have different responses. 1 believes, 1 doesn’t.

73. 32:23

    Two people can look at the stars at night. 1 believes and one doesn’t. Two people could look at the same gospel and read the same gospel. 1 believes and one doesn’t. Two people could see Israel restored. 1 believes and one doesn’t. Is the difference the sign? Is the difference of scripture? Is the difference of stars? Is it different the the the restoration of the state of Israel?

74. 32:44

    Are those things different? Is the difference the sign? No, the difference is not the sign. The sign is the same. The difference is the treasure in the heart of the one that observes the sign, which is why the poor loved Christ, because there’s so little to lose.

75. 33:07

    That’s why the powerful and the rich hated him, because belief costs too much. It’s not the sign, it’s the heart of the one that sees the sign. So what sign are you looking for?

76. 33:24

    Maybe we simply need to ask God to help us accept the truth right in front of us, not asking for something more than we’ve been given to lay down our treasures, which, as this chapter will tell us later, cannot be traded. None of them. For there’s no profit that you could ever gain and trade for your life.

77. 33:49

    In our next study, then, we’re going to build on these travels in the Gentile lands. And we’re going to see the Gentile’s faithful response. And we’re going to see how Jesus will respond to the trap they’ve laid for him. And to do that, we’re going to look at what is the sign of the prophet Jonah.