Motley Crew Bible Study Notes for August 17, 2011

All citations from the Holy Bible are from the New International Version, used with permission.

45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[c] lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[d]

47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[e] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

55 Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. 56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph,[f] and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

From noon until 3 PM, the brightest part of the day. The Jews began counting the hours of the day at 6 AM, sunrise.

The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

In that day they will roar over it
like the roaring of the sea.
And if one looks at the land,
there is only darkness and distress;
even the sun will be darkened by clouds.

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[a]

One member recalled a portion of the Aaronic Blessing, “may He make His face to shine upon you.” The thought was that now that Jesus was taking on His shoulders the sins of mankind, the Father could no longer look upon the Son, and thus “darkness came over all the land.”

Who could forget? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But those at the foot of the Cross knew that Jesus was referring to the entire Psalm. The first 11 verses are reproduced here.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
“let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

He was forsaken by God. God had turned His back on His Son because the Son had taken our Sins upon Himself, and God cannot abide sin (although He loves the sinner). The wages of sin is death and Jesus paid that debt in full for sin, for all time, for us. Jesus was experiencing the full wages of sin – that separation from God that is the deepest circle of Dante's hell. If it had been our last hours, instead of His last hours, that very same darkness would cover us, for we would die in unredeemed and unredeemable sin.

According to His divinity, He didn't have to ask. But by His humanity, He asked – the pain, the suffering, the humiliation, the darkness. Since the darkness began to cover the earth at the sixth hour, for three full hours, Jesus was completely separated from the Father, something that He had never experienced before. He called out, but there was no answer from God (how often did David lament this same thought in the Psalms). This is hell. Separation from God. Being out on the sidewalk, looking through the window to see the saints with their God at the eternal feast, knowing that I can never and will never be a part of that all-encompassing love.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
“let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.”

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30. Emphasis added.

The word “when” here is important. The significance in Hebrew culture was that “when” was the signal that the job was finished, that it was time to sit down. In this context, the job of reconciliation is finished. The debt had been paid. It was time to return to the Father, to reunite the Trinity.

Luke 23:43, 46
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” ... 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John 17:5
And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

1 Peter 3:18-19
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive,[a] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—

Ultimately, Jesus went to heaven to be seated at God's right hand, where we will one day join Him with glorified souls and bodies. When the Father resurrected the Son, He was now fully God again.

Pastor Eddie remarked that this was the time when forgiveness precedes repentance, as pointed out by Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel.

"The saved sinner ... knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus, the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace."

This was in the context of a conversation that had occurred a month or so ago in the Motley Crew concerning why some people come to worship service on Sunday mornings, that is, not to get something from God, but to give thanks for the many, many gifts of love that God has given to me – knowing that my "sacrifice" is pitifully small in comparison to the sacraments received – but also knowing that the gifts of love that I will get from God in that next hour will be like trying to get a drink of water out of a fire-hose of His Grace.

When Jesus was resurrected, then was fulfilled Genesis 3:15, “he will crush your head.”

One member mentioned a theme that she had been contemplating over the last couple of months, the wrath of God, and how this seems to have been removed from our practicing beliefs. While God is love, He is not only love but also wrath. Jesus walked about God's wrath repeatedly in the New Testament.

But because of Jesus, we are blessed. Without Jesus we would have a life of wrath, of hell. And those who do not accept Jesus will suffer eternal damnation (indeed, walk through any jail in the world … you'll have travelogue of unredeemed desperation and actualized hell on earth – that is, separation from the fulfilling love of God).

When we minister to others, we need to do it like Jesus did. If it is necessary, tell them that they are a Pharisee, “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.” Matt. 23:27. If they're asking for mercy, give them mercy as Jesus did to the Adulterous Woman:

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” John 8:9-11.

Make it real grace, not cheap grace, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in his powerful The Cost of Discipleship.

We talked about the book of Romans, which deals grace. One member recommended the book What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey, which does an excellent job of answering the question: “What does grace look like?”

It was also mentioned that the thief on the cross was a beautiful example of Jesus' grace: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43. In this context, Beth told us about a section from one of William Barclay's commentaries concerning how a king could reward someone. Like inviting someone to dinner, the offer to walk in the garden was a special privilege:

“The word Paradise is a Persian word meaning a walled garden. When a Persian king wished to do one of his subjects a very special honor he made him a companion of the garden which meant he was chosen to walk in the garden with the king. It was more than immortality that Jesus promised the penitent thief. He promised him the honoured place of a companion of the garden in the courts of heaven.”

God did this too, as we saw in Genesis 3, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”

So, when Jesus told the thief that they would be in Paradise that day, everyone would understand what Jesus had done for him.

Jesus did this for us, too, and someday we will hear the sound of the LORD God, as He walks in the garden in the cool of the day.

We are no more in need of a High Priest to intercede for us. Now, Jesus is our High Priest. Then, a Temple was needed as a place where God would live; now, God lives within us. We are God's Temple (both individually and corporately, as an ecclesia, a church). In the Temple, only the High Priest could come into the presence of God, and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. Now, we can all directly approach God on the Altar of our churches, both physically and spiritually.

At the moment of Jesus' death, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom. By His death, Jesus opened a new way into the presence of God. … No longer was the Temple in Jerusalem to be the place where men worshiped God. From now on they would worship Him “in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-24).

The first Christians were converted Jews. They continued to worship at the Temple as Jesus had. As they began to understand the meaning and significance of Jesus' person, work, and teaching, they realized they were the new people of God, infused by God's Spirit. As such, they were the new, living Temple. …

Ezekiel and the other prophets has prophesied a new temple, and Paul understood the church as the fulfillment of those prophesies. Individually the Christian's body is the “Temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Corporately, the church is “the temple of God” where the Spirit of God dwells. Christians are growing “into a holy temple in the Lord … a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21-22). …

In addition to understanding the church as the new, spiritual temple of God on earth that replace the Temple in Jerusalem, the New Testament alludes to a heavenly temple in whose life the church participates. … Because Christ our High Priest dwells in this heavenly sanctuary, we can enter the heavenly Holy of Holies and participate in the worship of the heavenly temple. … Christians who overcome temptation and trials are made pillars in the heavenly temple of God.

Source: Nelson's Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), pp. 1038-1039.

The reference to “the curtain” (the veil in older translations) is actually to two curtains that hung in the Temple before the Most Holy Place. These two curtains were 20 cubits wide and 20 cubits high [30' x 30'], and hung 18” apart. See the fuller notes below concerning “The Temple – Then and Now.”

It was asked whether or not the High Priests and other priests of the Temple understood the significance of this tearing of the Veil. It was observed that they couldn't help but “get it,” since there was two sacrifices a day at the Altar of Incense, which was immediately in front of the Veil.

The Sanhedrin had a tough day. First, they were up all night taking care of the matter of this blasphemous rabbi from the Galilee. Then, they had to deal with the Romans on a day that they should have been preparing for the continuing observances of the 8-day long Passover feast. The trial took a bunch of time, and then, after they found out what Pilate had written for the placard on the top of the cross, they actually had to go out to Golgotha – a place of death that would render them ceremonially unclean! Then there was three hours of darkness, and you know how that had to freak out the people. The Veil in the Temple was destroyed, exposing the Most Holy Place! The tombs were opened and all these dead people were resurrected – just how were we going to explain that?? Then we needed to arrange for a squad of men to guard the tomb that that traitor Joseph of Arimathea had provided (he and Nicodemus can both expect to get expelled from the Sanhedrin). And then, three days later – on the first day of the week when they thought everything was behind them – then the body of that hick rabbi from the country disappeared from the tomb, even though they had guards posted. Then there was the matter of cooking up a story and bribing the guards.

Whew! We almost have to feel sorry for Caiaphas and the rest of the Sanhedrin. Almost.

It was asked, what if it happened today? Some would be on their knees praying, while others would be looking around and asking for a scientific explanation. Some would just shrug and get on with the business of business, our “everydayness” as Walter Percy put it in the movie The Moviegoer (quoted by Brennan Manning in Chapter 5 of The Ragamuffin Gospel).

A couple of interesting books that have been recommended by members of the group:

The New Testament uses two words for Temple. Hieron refers to the collection of buildings that made up the Temple – the Temple Complex, as it were – while Naos refers to the Temple building itself, the Sanctuary. The source for this and the following information is the Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), pp. 523-256.

The Temple building (Naos) itself was in the shape of an inverted “T.” The Portico – the porch building which was the cross member of the inverted “T” – was a vestibule 100 cubits long and 100 cubits high; the entrance was 70 cubits high and 24 cubits wide (a cubit is 18”). The source for this and the following information is the Zondervan Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), pp. 523-256.

This led into the Holy Place (the Hekhal), which was 40 cubits long, 20 cubits wide and 60 cubits high. It contained the table of showbread, the seven-branched lampstand, and the altar of incense. Between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place (the Holy of Holies) was the “veil.” The veil was actually two curtains, separated by a space 18” wide. Each curtain stretched from floor to ceiling.

The Most Holy Place (the Devir) was 20 cubits by 20 cubits by 60 cubits high. In Herod's temple, it was empty; in Solomon's temple, it contained the Ark of the Covenant (which disappeared after the Babylonian conquest … generating a great deal of speculation about its whereabouts, that is, if it still exists). This was the place where God's spirit lived, manifesting his presence in the glory cloud, the Shekinah. It was entered once each year by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the seventh month). He entered the Most Holy Place, with his censer, by going to the south side of the first curtain, passing between the curtains to the north side, and then emerging into the Holy of Holies itself. This action was the culmination of an elaborate sacrifice made to atone for the sins of mankind (Lev. 16; Heb. 10:1-10), recognizing that mankind itself was unable to make any atonement for its sins.

At the time of Jesus' death, these two curtains – the veil – was torn from top to bottom. This signified that God's people no longer needed to have the High Priest worship on their behalf, but could now directly come into the presence of God and offer their worship. The physical Temple was no longer required, because the Christian became God's Temple, the place where God's Spirit resided. In addition, the Church – as the body of Christians, not the building – became a Temple wherein God resides. Finally, there is also a heavenly Temple, presided over by Jesus.

This photograph shows the Temple itself, surrounded by the supporting buildings. The Portico is located in the center of the picture; the Temple Building (the Naos) is the tall structure beyond the Portico. Photograph by J. Culbertson of a model of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem.
from http://www.ebibleteacher.com/imagehtml/jerumodel.html

The importance of the tearing of their veil in the Temple is not well understood.

Source: Nelson's Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), pp. 1038-1039.

The Death of Jesus

Mark 15

33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah."

36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said.

37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

38The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!"

40Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

Jesus' Death

Luke 23

44It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour,45for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

47The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, "Surely this was a righteous man." 48When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. 49But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

The Death of Jesus

John 19

28Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." 29A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.30When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. 32The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. 33But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. 35The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. 36These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken," 37and, as another scripture says, "They will look on the one they have pierced."

Lenski, R.C.H., The Interpretation of St. Matthew's Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1943)

The Prayer And Study Resources web page has a listing of some research web sites that I use. In addition, Additional Research Resources is a page with a more complete list of Bible and Lutheran resources, plus there is the Research Resources Checklist, which is the web page I use when I first begin a Bible study. Both of these last two web pages are always growing, and please let me know if you are aware of other great sites.