This has passed us by for centuries. We’ve never understood it. As a result we’ve conjured up in our minds all kinds of erroneous conclusions over the things that Jesus has had to say whenever we heard him say anything or listen to him at all. But most of us, as we have already demonstrated, have simply just passed him by because we have not understood the things that he did say. If I asked you, why do you spend your time in the Epistles and not in the Gospels, you wouldn’t really be able to give me an answer. It’s actually subconscious. We don’t know why. The why is because whenever we read we don’t understand what it is that we hear.
If the apostle Paul came into town and he was speaking on one side of town and Jesus came into town and he was speaking on the other side of town, and you had the opportunity to go listen to one of the two, but not both, which one would you listen to? It’s no contest. There wouldn’t be anybody there because Paul would come to listen to him too. So I think it’s about time that we listen to him also. He had some exciting things to say. They have been all the more exciting by the archaeological discoveries that we’ve made in Israel that have led us into this understanding. We should have known all of these things all of this time because the material has always been there, but the Bible says that blindness is what happened to Israel until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. If we’re Jews, and a part of the commonwealth of Israel, that means that we’ve been blinded to some extent too doesn’t it? But God is lifting that veil of the Jews and he’s lifting the veil for those of us that are wild olive branches that have been grafted in and it’s unbelievable what is happening in Israel today. I wish I could tell you of some of the exciting things that are going on. I just spent two hours on the telephone from 2 am until 4 am talking to one of my colleagues in Israel who was telling me about some exciting things that have happened this week. My son is in Israel now studying at the Institute of Holy Land studies in Jerusalem, and we’ve made so many giant steps forward in the understanding of the word of God in the last 15 to 20 years that I believe that today, right now, at this moment, we as God’s people have the capacity to understand more about the word of God, to move out into a dimension of knowledge and understanding and therefore power and victory than at any other time in human history. We have the capacity to know more about the word of God then even the men that wrote it. Why? They didn’t write it all. It was written over 1500 years by many different people and they didn’t have the complete picture and we’re living now, 2000 years, on the other side of the fact and we have all of the material at our disposal and now we have all of the knowledge, archaeological and textual, and now we can know more about God and the things of God and the word of God than even the men that contributed to the writing of it. I don’t know whether that excites you or not, but it does me. We know today a number of things that we’ve always wondered about and I’ve shared some of these with you before.
For example we were talking about John the Baptist a few moments ago. What was he doing in the wilderness? Why was he baptizing in the wilderness? Why wasn’t he in Jerusalem where all the people were? Some said he was baptizing in the wilderness because the Jordan River was there and they needed water to baptize and so that’s why the people were going from Jerusalem to be baptized. But when you read in Acts 2 there were 3000 people who received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they were baptized in Jerusalem and they didn’t have to go all the way to the Jordan River to be baptized. Where were they baptized? For years we didn’t know, and that’s why for about 250 years there has been an argument between the immersionists and the non-immersionists over the subject of baptism. The non-immersionists have said, they must have been sprinkled because there isn’t any place in Jerusalem for that many people to have been dunked. It was dry most of the time and this was right at the spring of the year and there probably isn’t that much water and so they must have been sprinkled. The immersionists said, No, they must be dunked. Now they didn’t know why they must be dunked, and they didn’t understand the whole subject of Jewish ritual immersion but they are supposed to be dunked. Don’t think that I’m being facetious or unkind when I talk about a particular denomination. You see I have to be specific in order to use an illustration. I’m not just picking on one particular denomination. If you come to me and tell me what denomination you belong to I’ll pick on you because by the large none of us in Christianity have understood the ordinances of the church. But, the Baptist for example, immersionists, have said that the way that it was done was that they were dunked under the water. Now they didn’t really know why. They were dunked under because that was the outward expression of an inward act that had already taken place which meant that the individual didn’t really need to be dunked in order to be saved. They can be saved and go to heaven without being baptized. But you can’t get into the Baptist church without being baptized. If you want to be a member of the Baptist church you have to be baptized because you can’t be a member without being baptized. Which means that it takes one more step to get into the Baptist church than it was into heaven.
But we know exactly what Jewish ritual immersion was. We know what it was and how they did it, why they did it, and now we even know where they did it. As a result of our archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount in 1974 we found a whole ritual immersion bath complex where the 3000 were baptized on the Day of Pentecost. As a matter of fact, we can today pinpoint within a matter of steps the exact spot where Peter stood and preached the first gospel sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Monumental staircase along the southern wall of the Temple Mount…we know where the Holy Spirit fell. You thought that it fell in an upper room some place didn’t you? The Bible says that they got themselves up into the house. What house? What house in Jerusalem was big enough for all 120 disciples? Then for them to preach and 3000 to respond. What were they doing all 120 sticking their heads out of windows someplace? Hollering to the folks down in the streets? We never stop to think these things out. That passage is not English and it’s not Greek and it doesn’t say that they got themselves into a house it says “the house”. But not knowing that this isn’t Greek they just literally translated it from “the house” to house and now we have a house someplace. But in Hebrew they got themselves up to Ha Bite “the house”. But in Hebrew bite just doesn’t mean house. Bite can mean household, family or many other things, but one of the principle things that it means is Temple. If you were with me in Jerusalem and we wanted to go to the temple mount I would say to my driver, La Ha ha bite…to the mountain of Ha bite, the house. Even to this day in Hebrew ha bite means the Temple. It says that they got themselves up to ha bite. We even know from the Mishnah where they got themselves up to. The Mishnah tells us that there was a monumental staircase along the southern wall of the Temple mount that led up to two gates, a double and triple gate that was known in the time of Jesus as the Huldah gates after the prophetess Huldah from the Old Testament time of Josiah (621 B.C.) and the reform and cleaning of the Temple during the time of Josiah king of Judah. The gates were known as the Huldah gates. There was a monumental staircase and we’re told that it was the custom of the Jews to assemble themselves together at this monumental staircase at three of the principle feasts or festivals of the year (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles). When did this happen? Pentecost. Where were the people? The monumental staircase. Where was this staircase? At the Temple, it was part of the temple. When Peter stands up under the anointing of the Holy Spirit and preaches the first gospel sermon and the people are stirred in their hearts and say,
What must we do to be saved? And he says, repent and be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit they don’t have to stop and say, “Where are we going to be baptized?” How are we going to do this? There isn’t a lot of water in the Kedron valley. They didn’t have to walk any further than from here to the back of the auditorium to reach the ritual immersion pools and because of the way that the Jews baptized all 3000 could have been baptized in about 15 minutes time. We didn’t find just one or two ritual immersion baths, we found a whole ritual immersion bath complex so large that all 3000 could have been immersion in a few moments time. We know all there is to know about ritual immersion. We know why it was done, how it was done, we know how big a ritual immersion bath had to be. It has to be at least 43 inches high, we know it had to contain at least 120 gallons of water because if it contained 120 gallons minus one spoonful it wasn’t kosher and they had to go and be completely re-baptized all over again. So it always had more than 120 gallons. It had to be tri portioned. We know how they immersed when they went down into the water. This is interesting. No one ever immersed anyone else. In Hebrew when it talks about John the Baptist, it’s not John the one dunking someone under. It’s John the one who by virtue of what he is saying is causing the people to go under. We know exactly how ritual immersion was done. The Jews went down into the water, there was always someone there in attendance to assist them to see if they went completely under, this was especially important for the women for the hair because every single hair on their head had to be surrounded by water. They would go down into the ritual immersion bath, stand with their feet apart, their arms out in front of them, their fingers spread apart, usually with their eyes and mouth open, and then they would dip themselves. The one who was in attendance, the one doing the baptizing, was there to see if they didn’t get all the way they could give them a slight assist. Just recently we found the oldest wall painting, called a fresco, of the baptism of Jesus by John. It was on the catacombs in Rome. It shows John standing out on the bank reaching forth and giving Jesus his hand and pulling him out of the water that he had just baptized himself according to Jewish method.
Much of what we know today, once it has been made known, will completely revolutionize theology. It’s going to necessitate a restructuring of most major denominations. That’s exciting to me because there is nothing that I cherish, no doctrine, no dogma, no tradition, that I have so dear that I’m not willing to lay down in face of the truth. The reason for that is that the truth can only do one thing for us—set you free! Did you catch that? The other side of the coin is that I’m saddened because traditions do not come down easily. There will be many who will turn a deaf ear to the truth. But once you know what I just told you it eliminates any possibility of infant baptism. In Judaism nobody ever baptized anybody else. Baptism was always self-administered. We know so many things that have never been published.
We know how they crucified in Jesus’ day. How many of you have heard, that we found, not too long ago, in a stone ossuary, or stone coffin, the bones of a man who had been crucified? The first archaeological evidence that we have ever had of a man who had been crucified, and the man we know what his name was, and he dated back to the first century contemporary with Jesus. We know how he was crucified. He wasn’t crucified with his feet together as we see in the common method of crucifixion on the crucifix. We even found in the ossuary in which his bones were placed, the nail that had been placed through the bones in his feet. It even had a board on the front of it which had an inscription on it at one time which brings us in remembrance of the crucifixion of Jesus where they said that they had an inscription in three language. What were those languages? Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The man was crucified with his heels together sideways and the nail was driven through his heels. Orthopedic surgeons who examined the bones said that it was at that particular point that they put a pin in the foot for certain types of orthopedic surgery. Then they went on to describe what kind of a death this man would have suffered in that kind of a position on a cross when his feet would have been together with a board across his feet this way, the nail through his heels, and then turned in this kind of manner and suspended on the cross. He would have suffocated in his own body fluids unable to support himself. In certain ways you can support yourself, but in this way you cannot. We’ve known that since 1968, and I was in Israel when it was found. I even know the man’s name. It’s never been published to any degree. The information that I’m going to be sharing with you in “Understanding the difficult words of Jesus” will be published this week for the first time in this country for the general audience. This is just the beginning of what we know.
I just pray that you will join with me in praying that God will make it possible for all of the information that we have at our disposal as a result of the researches and discoveries in Israel in the last 30 years, that that information can be known to God’s people.
Jesus was a Jew. He was not only a Jew, he was a Rabbi. As a Rabbi he taught in Hebrew and as a Rabbi he used a rabbinic method of interpretation, or study, called remez or hinting. The Hebrew taught in one of four different ways. They had a word that was an acrostic that was formed from the first word of each of the four different methods. That word was called pardett which means an orchard in Hebrew. That is where you pluck, or harvest, that which is nourishing and sweet and sustaining and conducive to growth. Those four methods of interpretation were Pshot, or remez, hinting at something, Drash which was homiletical, and Sod which was spiritual or hidden. Jesus was a master at remez. It’s only when you know this can you begin to understand the difficult words of Jesus. Jesus is always hinting back at something. By using a word, a phrase, a sentence immediately he would call into the minds of his hearers the whole passage, the whole chapter, the whole book, the whole theology on the subject. Because the Jews in his day, by and large, had all the Bible committed to memory. Not only the Bible but Mishnah and Midrash, or commentary on law. All he had to do was use a word and all of this information would be brought to mind.
How many of you have been to Texas? State Capitol? When I say state capitol what comes to your mind? You see it don’t you? It looks like the capital in Washington except ours is bigger, and it’s made out of pink granite and ever night you can see the lights shining and as we come over the hill we can see the State Capitol and that mental image comes into our mind the moment I say state capitol. Jesus is using this type of method of study known as remez. He would use a word or phrase and when he used it that brought that whole chapter, or book, or teaching on that subject to their mind. All he had to do is say, “If a man’s eye is single his whole body is filled with light. If his eye is evil his whole body is filled with darkness.” His audience would know exactly which passages he was referring. They knew exactly about what he was speaking about. The reason that we haven’t understood it is because we didn’t know this. But now we do and now we can begin to study and we can begin to hear Jesus speak to us. Again, I say unto you, with great emphasis, he is the teacher par excellent. What he has to say is revolutionary. What he has to say about himself. Who is he by the way? Who is this man? Who is Jesus? We’ve never understood this really. The ecclesiastical church has never understood for 1900 years who, or what, Jesus is. Therein lies our problem because if we do not know who he is then we don’t know who we are. It is he that is in me.
How many of you heard that Jesus always tried to hide his messiah ship? Everywhere he went he told people not to tell who he was or what he had done. Nothing can be further from the truth. Everywhere Jesus went, and everything that he said and did, it was a dramatic declaration as to who he was. He made some very dramatic statements about himself. One thing that may come as a surprise to you is that he never calls himself the Son of God. He never uses that term on himself and it’s not Hebraic. It’s not Hebrew, it’s Hellenistic. When we think of son of God, by and large we have a limited mental image in our mind as to his person. When Jesus refers to himself he always refers to himself as the son of man. What’s the son of man? There are those folks that are confused and they think well son of man, because these terms are used in the gospels almost interchangeably and not knowing that one of them is Hellenistic or Greek and the other one is Hebrew they say, well son of man refers to the humanity of Jesus and son of God refers to the deity of Jesus and that he was both human and divine. But nothing can be further from the truth. Jesus never called himself Son of God. He does use a number of terms that he does use in reference to himself. He does call himself son. He does call himself son of man. But who is son and who is son of man? What is son of man? What does it mean? Son of man is a reference, a remez, or hint, back at Daniel 7:13, 14. Let’s have a look at that passage of scripture. The most supernatural figure in the biblical text. “And I saw in the night visions, and behold on the clouds of heaven came one like a son of man. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. There was given him dominion, glory, kingdom that all people’s, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” Who’s he talking about? The son of man. The most supernatural figure in the entire biblical text. Every time Jesus says son of man he might as well say Daniel 7: 13, 14. The one to whom is given glory, and power and kingdom and dominion that all people’s, nation’s and language’s should serve him. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Who is the son of man? Before we start listening to Jesus let’s listen to the word of God if there is a difference. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Turn to Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a young woman who is unmarried and a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.” What’s Emmanuel? God with us. But, I don’t understand God with us because doesn’t God say at one time on one occasion “this is my beloved son”? It just so happens that son of God is not Hebraic. Son of God is not messianic. Son of God is not a Hebraism for the person of Jesus. But the word son is. In the O.T. there develops the concept that when the messiah comes he’s going to come as a son. There is going to be a son/father relationship. Turn to Luke 10:22, (remember Daniel 7:13, 14; the one who is presented before the ancient of days and to whom is given glory, and power, and authority, and dominion.) Now listen to Luke, “All things have been given over to me into my power by my Father. No one knows who the son is except the father and who the father is except the son and anyone to whom the son may reveal and make him known.” Here Jesus is claiming to have this son/father relationship. As soon as Jesus uses the term son the Rabbis know immediately what he is talking about. As soon as he uses the term father the Rabbis know immediately what he is talking about and to what he’s referring and the whole theological implications. Turn to Psalms 2:7, “I will declare the decree of the Lord. He said to me, “you are my son, this day have I begotten you.” Turn to Psalms 89:26, “He shall cry to me you are my father, my God and the rock of my salvation. I will make him the first born the highest of the kings of the earth. My mercy and loving kindness will I keep for him forever more and my covenant shall stand fast and be faithful with him. He shall cry to me, you are my father, my God.” Who’s he talking about? Son, father, who is this man? Do you remember that even at the age of 12 Jesus has a conscious awareness of who and what he is? As a matter of fact he makes a statement that is so dramatic, that is so revolutionary, that when he says no one can possibly mistake what he means. We’ve never understood it of course because we’ve not seen it in its Hebraic context. But do you remember when he was at 12 years of age there in the Temple questioning with the rabbinic authorities of his day and his parents come and his mother says, “What have you done? You had us so worried.” He turns and says, “Know ye now that I must be about my Father’s business?” No Jew before or after to this day has ever dared call God, my Father. That’s the reason why she pondered those things in her heart. When Jesus taught his followers to pray did he teach them to pray my father? Our father and all Jews to this very day pray, “Our father which art in heaven”. Only Jesus dared call God his father. Notice this son/father relationship. All things are delivered unto me by my father. What is he doing? He’s hinting back at something and once you know what’s happening the euphemisms that he’s using, the parallelisms, what he is saying is something much more dramatic than what we see in our theological concepts of Jesus as the son of God.
