Jesus Seizes the Initiative

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Don Merritt

Mark 12:35-37

Parallel Texts: Matthew 22:41-46; Luke 20:41-44

On that fateful Tuesday, Jesus has fought off three waves of attack from Jewish authorities who each peppered Him with questions designed to entrap Him into a mistake they could use as a pretense to arrest and kill Him. Now, Jesus moves to counter-attack.

His opening salvo comes in the form of a question in verse 35:  “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David?

To be fair, the teachers of the law were not wrong about the Messiah being the son of David in the sense that Messiah would clearly be of the House of David, the royal house of Israel, the house of kings. So, while they were technically correct as legalists usually are, they missed the larger point that Messiah would also be the Son of God, here on earth to establish an entirely new kind of kingdom; one that is not of this world at all.

David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’

Mark 12:36; c.f. Psalm 110:1

Take careful notice, dear reader of this statement of Jesus, for many in our time seem to miss its ultimate significance. Jesus is making the point that David himself in the Psalm refers to this Messiah as “lord” and the son is not the lord over his father; it’s the other way around under the Law (Honor your father and mother). Therefore, the Messiah is not merely of the clan of David, because He is also the Son of God, and being God’s Son entirely supersedes the fact that He is of the House of David.

Here’s an example of this relationship: Suppose the president had a son who was also a brigadier general. Everyone calls the son “general” and he receives the honor and respect of that rank. If a brigadier general walks up to the southwest gate of the White House, and his name is not on the guest list, he is turned away. If the son of the president walks up to the gate, he is always admitted because he is the president’s son, for being the president’s son supersedes his military rank when it comes to access to the president. So also does the fact that Jesus is the Son of God supersede His rank in the House of David.

Probably for all of the wrong reasons, the crowd was delighted.

Mark 12:38-40

Parallel Texts: Matthew 23:1-39; Luke 20:45-47

Jesus denounced the teachers of the law in this brief passage. His bill of particulars contains several charges:

They dress richly and expect to receive respect from the people.

They expect to get the best seats at public gatherings.

They “devour widows’ houses.”

They make long public prayers for show.

The other accounts add the Pharisees to this indictment, and Matthew records the seven woes here, while Mark as usual, is pithy. Consider what Jesus is accusing them of. Oh yes, He is calling them colossal hypocrites, but look at the priority system of these “righteous” and “religious” men. They want, more than anything else apparently, to be honored, respected and powerful. It is doubtful whether or not they care at all about their relationship with God, or about being faithful to Him; they are altogether worldly in their outlook in spite of their pious exteriors. They are using their lofty religious positions for personal advancement, and in the end they will rue the day they started down this path.

Let’s not get too carried away throwing stones at the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, and let’s also not get too carried away with looking for the Pharisees in our midst, even though there are many, for this passage is within a larger context. This larger context runs through the entire chapter, and the climax and application is in the last few verses, and we will look at the them tomorrow:

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Jesus Under Attack: The Third Wave

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Don Merritt

On that busy Tuesday, Jesus came under assault first by the chief Priest, then by the Pharisees, and now the third wave of attacks, this time from the Sadducees and then the teachers of the law. First, the Sadducees:

Mark 12:18-27

Parallel Texts: Matthew 22:23-33; Luke 20:27-39

The Sadducees don’t believe in a resurrection, so their trap is designed to get Jesus to either side with them, or wander into some kind of legal mistake, and frankly they ask a better question than the Pharisees did earlier. The flaw in their logic is this: If a man has several wives during his lifetime, and then rises from the grave at the last day and has multiple wives in heaven, that is one thing, but for a woman to have had multiple husbands, as can happen without any impropriety, as they demonstrate, the thought of a woman with multiple husbands is just too shocking… so it must prove that there is no resurrection.

As a note, the Pharisees were the ones who believed in a resurrection, and their rivals were the Sadducees. Actually, the Pharisees were about the only ones in authority who believed in a general resurrection in the Jewish community at the time; it isn’t one of the promises of the Law as we have seen many times in previous posts. Could it be that the Sadducees secretly hoped to use Jesus’ popularity against the Pharisees?

In verses 24-25, Jesus disarms their presupposition about marriage in heaven… their straw man, really… and then in the remaining verses, blows their no resurrection views out of the water by simply observing that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God of the living and not a God of the dead; sorry boys.

The Sadducees retreat and the teachers of the law advance in attack:

Mark 12:28-34

Parallel Texts: Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 20:40

The teacher of the law who asked Jesus the next question had noticed that Jesus gave the Sadducees a good answer to their question, so he asked Jesus which of the commandments is most important, and it seems to me from Mark’s account that the man was actually asking an honest question; not to trick or trap Jesus but to find out what He would say. Of course we all know the answer that Jesus gave in verses 29-31

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

What happens next is really interesting. The teacher speaks to Jesus as though Jesus were a bright pupil and compliments Him on His answer, and goes on to teach Jesus in verses 32-33

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Jesus told the man that he had answered wisely and that he wasn’t far from the Kingdom of God, for the man had told Jesus that the two greatest commandments were more important than all of the sacrifices.

The tide begins to turn in this battle, and Jesus is poised to take the offensive when we get together next time and He has one more observation for His disciples that will just about put the day into context.

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Nakedness as a Metaphor in Scripture: The New Testament

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Don Merritt

You might have thought after our last post on this subject that it’s all well and good to discuss nakedness in the Old Testament, but we live under the New Testament, and many things changed because of what Jesus has taught and accomplished between the two Testaments. So even though the metaphor, as most Scriptural metaphors do, comes out of the Old Testament, a look at nakedness in the New Testament is in order to see if we need to adjust our thinking.

The primary word that is translated “naked” in the New Testament is the Greek word gymnos (G1131) which means “naked”. It is morally neutral; neither good nor bad, just a state of being undressed. Gymnos (from which we get our word “gymnasium”) appears 15 times in the New Testament (Matt. 25:36, 38 43, 44;  Mark 14:51, 52; John 21:7; Acts 19:16; 1 Cor. 15:37; 2 Cor. 5:3; Heb. 4:13; James 2:15; Rev. 3:17; 16:15; 17:16). King James translates the word “naked” 14 times and “bare” once, while the NASB translates it as “naked “ 11 times, “bare” two times, and “stripped” and “without clothing” once each. There isn’t a case where it means anything other than not wearing clothes; it isn’t nuanced, nor is it used in an imperative sense i.e. as a command, other than to see to the needs of those who are destitute.

The main point of all of this is really quite simple: The New Testament in no way negates the metaphor we discovered in the Old. Actually we can also discern that in both Old and New Testament times, clothing itself was worn for two primary purposes: First and foremost as a protection against the elements, and second as part of a social convention (or contract). The significance of clothing as part of a social contract is hard to overestimate, for it results in the simple reality that there are times and places where a society, any society, may determine that wearing clothing is the proper and correct thing to do. For example, while in the ancient near east not wearing clothing in certain situations would have been considered “normal”, there were other situations when it would have been considered very odd indeed. For example, a workman would often work without clothing in good weather, but if he were to venture into town, say to the marketplace, he would not go without clothing to buy food from a vendor on the street, for it would have been considered improper and inappropriate. Certainly, if you were invited to the palace of the king, you would wear your best outfit, for not doing so would be disrespectful to the king. This was not a matter of morality versus immorality; it was a matter of social expectation.

For the purpose of this study, it is important for us to recognize the distinction between immorality (sin) as opposed to social convention, for if we do not see the distinction, we are likely to miss the Scriptural metaphor of nakedness before God, which is actually an important spiritual concept., because we will assume there is something sinful going on in the metaphor. In our time, our social conventions are much stricter with regard to the human form than they were in Biblical times, and many of us, myself included, have missed this entirely because of our cultural and social bias.

With this distinction in place, I plan to move on in the next post in this series to a brief discussion of the concept of “naked before God” so that we might begin to see how truly amazing this metaphor is in Scripture.

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Jesus Under Attack, the Second Wave

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Don Merritt

Mark 12:13-17

Parallel Texts: Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:20-26

The second wave began later that same Tuesday. Jesus had already repulsed the attack of the Chief Priest, and this time, the Pharisees and their Herodian allies come at Him. As you recall, these two groups have been plotting to kill Jesus for some time now, and they have come to snare Him in a political trap.

“Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

Mark 12:14b-15a

The phrasing of this question is amateurish to say the least. First of all, they butter Him up a bit too much with the complimentary preamble to the actual question by saying that he is a teacher of the truth who cannot be swayed by anybody; He always sticks to the truth. Then they ask if it is lawful to pay the tax to Caesar; this is the real question. This is a terribly unpopular tax among the Jews because it isn’t honest, as we’ve covered before. It is also unpopular because it isn’t a tax imposed under Jewish law, but by a foreign occupying power. If Jesus wants to remain popular with the crowds, He must say “no.” However, if He does that, they will report Him to the Romans, and He will be taken away in chains and not heard from again. At this point, they make a tactical blunder when they ask the redundant question, “Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” Here’s a debating tip for you, any time you are asked a question followed by a redundancy that pins you down to a yes or no answer, a trap has been set; beware.

Jesus of course, is several steps ahead of them, and asks to see a Roman coin, asks them who is pictured there and whose inscription is on the coin and has now turned the tables on His attackers.

“Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

Mark 12:15c-17

Taking nothing away from Jesus’ quick thinking, these Pharisees and Herodians should stick to plotting and leave the confrontations to competent professionals, for even though they had set a trap, it is about the poorest excuse for a trap ever recorded, rising to the level of a child. Jesus was out of their snare with a simple request and had them checkmated in a one-liner.

He also taught something very important in the process… this was Jesus after all… and that is that our priority must be on the things of God and not on the things of this earth.

Jesus isn’t telling the people they should be thrilled to pay, nor is He making an endorsement of the Roman state; He is telling us to focus on God and the things of heaven.

At any rate, everyone was amazed at His answer, for once again Jesus’ perspectives were so entirely in opposition to their own perspectives that they hadn’t even considered that He might say what He did, for even then, following Jesus was entirely counter-intuitive, just as it is today.

When we get back together, the third wave of attack will burst upon the scene, this time led by the Sadducees.

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Jesus Under Attack

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Don Merritt

After Jesus’ discussion of the fig tree, He and the disciples enter the Temple courts and are observed by the priests and their entourage; the priests waste no time in challenging Him…

Mark 11:27-33

Parallel Texts: Matthew 21:23-27; Luke 20:1-8

The Chief Priest demands to know by what authority Jesus is saying and doing the things He’s been up to, and I’m sure that His attack on their little Temple gold mine was foremost in their minds. Jesus, a tough customer, isn’t going to play their game, so He asks them a question of His own: By what authority did John the Baptist do what he did?

Pay close attention to verses 31-32 and look at their reasoning: Pure politics! They settled on “I don’t know” in an attempt to dodge the question, so Jesus told them that He wouldn’t answer them either. Notice in His wording that He fully recognized their dodge. The text tells us they feared the people who believed John, but they also must have known that John testified concerning the identity of Jesus; He really had them in a corner.

Then, remarkably, Jesus answers their question in a parable.

Mark 12:1-12

Parallel Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46; Luke 20:9-19

The Chief Priest, the other priests, teachers, Pharisees and all the rest of them, knew exactly what Jesus was saying in the Parable of the Tenants; He was telling them the history of their people in a nutshell. Just as in Isaiah 5, the vineyard is Israel, they themselves are the tenants who beat and killed all of the servants God sent to them, yes, for those servants were the very prophets these guys talked about all the time. Now, God (the owner) has sent His Son to them, and they will kill Him too… and they will pay quite a price for their evil deeds.

Jesus finishes the parable off with a quote from Psalm 118 for good measure; they knew instantly who the “cornerstone” was… the stone the builders rejected. Jesus wasn’t going to play their games, but He was most assuredly speaking their language, and they were not pleased. It’s interesting don’t you think, that nobody stopped to consider the likelihood that Jesus was telling them the truth and offering them a way out of their jam.

At this point, they retreated. Jesus has fought off the first attack, but there were more coming, after all, it wasn’t even lunch time yet!

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Something Wonderful

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Don Merritt

Yesterday, something wonderful happened, we had a guest join our Sunday morning small group; a guest who was thousands of miles away in a different country with a different accent in a different culture.

This part made the day novel, not wonderful.

What made the occasion wonderful was that he almost immediately was accepted without condition because in every sense of the term he is “one of ours”; “one of us”. Now you must understand that our guest, paulfg, wasn’t accepted as “one of ours” because we all agree on everything all of the time, nor was it because we are all from the same background or denomination, nor do we have the same career or favorite team or anything like that… it is because we all love Jesus Christ and do our best to follow Him.

Yesterday, we saw and experienced the crucial reality that we really are all One in Christ.

I think I can safely say that this is a very big deal, for all too often this concept never quite makes the transition from abstract to real for most of us; it’s one thing to say it, and another thing to “get it”.

Yesterday, I think we all “got it”.

Why don’t we do more of this; what are we afraid of? I should think this is a lesson that would grab the attention of every preacher whatever they might be called in whatever denomination. I should think that this lesson would be a priority in any church group that cares about the Body of Christ; I should think this lesson would become a priority for any Christian.

Do you see it? We live in an amazing time in history, for we can connect easily with our brothers and sisters in Christ with nothing more than an internet connection, a computer and a free skype account, and with these tools our people, all of us, can easily come to see what God is doing in the Body of Christ everywhere… and not just in our little worlds.

This whole thing grew out of a few of us bloggers who began skyping about six months ago. As you know, we began two more skype groups a few weeks back made up of people who read this blog; you all were invited to join. Of course, there are practicalities involved like time zones, jobs and other commitments that get in the way, not to mention the ten or twenty bucks that you might need to spend if you don’t have a camera or a microphone for your computer. It could be that you would like to do something like this, but you just aren’t sure about doing it with a group from this blog… that’s fine. Each of you also has your own blog, so you can invite your own followers to begin a skype group; it only requires a post or two and a little bit of following up to get started; why not give it a try?

There’s nothing to lose, and a great deal to gain.

Or maybe you’d like to join us… You still can, just drop me a note…

Paul has also posted his reaction to yesterday, you can read it here. I hope you’ll have a look, and I hope you’ll give this some thought.

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Figs, Corruption and Prayers

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Don Merritt

Mark 11:12-26

Parallel Texts: Matthew 21:18-19, 11-13, 20-22; Luke 19:45-48; 21:37-38

Few teachers teach this section from Mark’s account, preferring instead to use the parallel in Matthew or Luke with their more confused timelines, but Mark’s timeline is much more clear than the other two. As a teacher or commentator, you have a choice here: You can take individual events out of this narrative and discuss a great amount of detail regarding money exchange, buying and selling of sacrifices and use the fig tree to support your favorite end times theory, or you can keep them within Mark’s context and see something wonderful. My approach for today is to leave these events within Mark’s timeline and gaze at them in wonder and amazement.

Remember that after the Triumphal Entry, Jesus proceeded to the Temple court and, finding the area deserted, returned quietly to Bethany for the night. The next morning, He sets out once again for the city. On the way, He sees a fig tree and walks over to it hoping to find some figs to eat. Seeing none there, He curses the tree, saying “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” (v. 14)

He continued into town and went to the Temple courts. This time, He found them full of activity, mostly of the buying and selling variety, and He drove out the money changers, the vendors and all the rest saying, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ (v. 17)

Now, catch the next verse:

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11:18

Mark has already told us that the Pharisees were plotting to kill Jesus, along with the allies of Herod; now the chief priest join the conspiracy… but notice why: “because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” 

Jesus walks into the Temple and shuts down the business operation and reminds the people that the Temple is supposed to be a house of prayer, and not a profit center… and the people are amazed! It almost sounds like prayer at the Temple was a novel concept, which it probably was.

When evening came, Jesus returned to Bethany.

The next morning, as they went past the fig tree from the previous morning, the disciples notice that it has withered, and now they are amazed.  Peter calls the tree to their attention, and Jesus sums up the point of this entire section: prayer, faith and forgiveness.

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Mark 11:22b-25

Jesus responds to Peter by speaking of faith and prayer, you can almost say that He is really referring to our relationship with God here: Faith in Him, interaction with Him in prayer. He also mentions that when we interact with God, we need to forgive our brothers and sisters if they have wronged us in any way; sounds like love your neighbor, don’t you think? Hmm… love God, love your neighbor: see the parallel?

Back to the beginning again: Jesus wishes for the fig tree to bear no more fruit, goes to town and chases the worldly business out of the Temple, which is God’s dwelling place on earth and the center of the Jewish relationship with God, stating that it is a place of prayer (interaction/relationship) and the chief priests want Him killed for interrupting their business. The next day, the fig tree is dead, and Jesus teaches an object lesson on putting your relationship with God first and foremost in your life, which is the same thing He was teaching at the Temple.

What comes first in our lives, work, money, profit; the things of this world? That seems to be the view of the chief priests who had a great little business going in God’s house. What are our churches all about, are our priorities the same as those of the chief priests? Could it be that this is the cause of a weak prayer life for us individually, and why many of our churches are not very effective for the cause of Christ?

Maybe, maybe not, but that was the lesson Jesus was teaching on that Monday and early Tuesday morning, and I hope we will reflect and pray on it.

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Faith and… a Tree

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Don Merritt

CB2014 029-LR

Many have said that the simple things in life are the best.  Simple things don’t  cost much, usually aren’t flashy and are seldom mentioned in the newspapers…  Things like devotion to duty, love of family, faith in God and serving others are the kinds of things that make life worth living…

Our Lord taught us that to love Him is to obey His commands (John 14:23) and at first glance this might seem difficult.  The truth is that it isn’t very difficult at all; it only requires simple and uncomplicated faith.  If we have simple faith to believe His teachings, than obeying Him is an easy burden to bear.

Faith is not complicated, it has no ulterior motive and it isn’t self promoting; it just boils down to a loving response to His loving act of saving us from death.  Simple faith is uncomplicated because we are relieved of the need to find a way to work it to our advantage or to use it to put others down; instead simple faith lifts everyone up.

Simple faith is like a tree that grows in the wild.  It doesn’t try to impress anybody, it doesn’t worry about the latest fashions or how to climb over other people on its way up the corporate ladder.  All the tree does is live, grow and do what God intended for it.

Come to think of it, we can learn quite a bit from a tree!

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Triumphal Entry

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Don Merritt

Mark 11:1-11

Parallel Texts: Matthew 21:1-12, 14-17; Luke 19:29-44; John 12:12-19

As we have come to expect, Mark gives us the simple facts of the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem as King and Messiah without fanfare or explanation of prophecies and Jewish traditions and expectations. In spite of this, anyone with some understanding of such things will recognize that the very manner of Jesus’ entry into town was a statement of who He was and why He had come.

Verses 1-6 tell of the arrangements, Jesus sending a couple of disciples out to get the donkey for Him to ride into town, and everything being just as Jesus had told them, yet we shouldn’t rush through this quite so fast. If you’ve been following along with this study, you will have noticed that Jesus, while He went around the countryside preaching the Kingdom, shied away from announcements of who He was, and often told the recipients of miracles to keep quiet about what had happened between them. Now by contrast, Jesus has a donkey to ride into town, and considering the fact that a donkey colt, never ridden, would be His method of transportation into the city, was exactly what had been prophesied for the entry of Messiah, (Zech. 9:9) Jesus was now “coming out.”

It strikes most of us as odd that a King would ride into the city on a donkey, rather than on a mighty steed, and many have misunderstood this to be a show of humility, but that is a Western notion. For the Jew, horses were reserved for warfare and a king would ride a donkey in peacetime; they were highly prized in fact for they are more durable and reliable than a horse. Jesus was making a statement, there’s no doubt about it, that He was King and Messiah.

When the colt was brought to Jesus, people took their cloaks and placed them on His mount for Him to sit upon, while others spread their cloaks out on the ground before Him, an honor reserved for a king. (2 Kings 9:13) Notice that Jesus no longer objected to this sort of thing. As Jesus began His procession into the city, people began to pour out to greet Him and others poured in with Him, there were shouts…

“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Mark 11:9b-10

Mark has recorded an interesting combination of shouts here! “Hosanna” literally means “save” and the people used it in the sense of a praise. They recognized by their acclimation that Jesus had come in God’s name, and then they tie this together as a sort of bridge between the past and future glory of Israel with the reference to Jesus as the son of David and rightful king. If you take a step back from the scene, tumultuous as it no doubt was, and reflect on the things Mark records here, there is an interesting picture:

Jesus came to Jerusalem to save the people, He was the Anointed One of God, coming in peace to God’s city, and He was transforming the throne of David from an earthly to a heavenly one. In the end, that was exactly what would happen in one week’s time.

Jesus travelled all the way to the Temple court, but when He arrived there, nobody from the Temple greeted Him. Mark mentions politely that it was late, but if the Chief Priest had been doing his job, the entire court would have rolled out the red carpet for the Messiah. Of course, they had other plans for God’s Anointed One.

Jesus quietly returned to Bethany.

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“Rabbi, I want to see.”

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Don Merritt

Mark 10:46-52

Parallel Texts: Matthew 20:29-34; Luke 18:35-43

Jesus continues His journey to Jerusalem and reaches Jericho; it isn’t far now to His destination. As they were leaving the city, followed by a large crowd, a blind beggar calls out to Jesus and people rebuke him, telling him to be quiet, yet Jesus hears the man’s cry. We aren’t even into the story, but what an image!

Everyone around this poor fellow wanted him to shut up, but Jesus hears his cry and sends someone over to get him and bring him to Jesus. Does Jesus tell the man to be quiet? Certainly not; He asks the man what He can do for him.

“Rabbi, I want to see.”

“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Mark 10:52

I wasn’t with Mark when he wrote all of this, and I never had the opportunity to ask him why this story is stuck in this particular spot. Oh, sure, it was the next thing that happened; we can agree with that to a point, at least it’s the next thing Mark decided to tell us about.  Ah yes, sometimes a story is more powerful because of what isn’t mentioned, and in this one, we have been in some pretty deep water in 10:1-45 haven’t we? Then, the next section is the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Right in the middle, between Jesus’ discussion of who is great in the Kingdom and His final entry into Jerusalem, the great climax of history, Mark drops this in: Why not mention something else, surely there were other incidents along the way?

Throughout the Kingdom Tour, Jesus has brought light into darkness; it’s been right there for all to see. Now, as He and the others begin their steep climb into the mountains to a Jerusalem that is as dark as can be, they are bringing the light of Truth and God’s Word along with them for all to see, and as Jesus and His entourage are walking past a blind man, the man shouts, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

And Jesus gives him sight so that he can see the Light of the World.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I think this is one of those “wow” moments.

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