Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. We think we progressed so much over the last centuries, but I’m not so sure. When we think of Jesus’ day and the early Christian church, we too often think of the Middle-ages with its feudal systems and the monks and monasteries. But the first century found itself embroiled in Rome’s politics, and in Israel, the fight between the different factions within the Jewish religion.

We think we have a divide between the Republicans and Democrats here, and we do. In recent years, we managed to tear each other apart until now we have come to the point of both extremist sides protesting anything the other says with violence, riots, burning down innocent victims’ property, shootings, and killings. We have become maniacal in our drive to push our agenda without listening to the other side.

Jesus’ day didn’t appear much different. The Sadducees held the seats of power. They had the honored seat of the priesthood and the powerful reign as chief priest. What the chief priest decreed; the people obeyed at risk of their eternal soul. But problems erupted in the politics of the arrangement.

The Sadducees gained their position through violence when the Maccabees overthrew the Seleucids, and the Hasmonean dynasty began. The Pharisees and Sadducees’ views were about as opposite as the Democrats and Republicans. And they hated each other about as much as the two parties seem to hate each other today.

The Sadducees, considered conservative among Jews because of their strict adherence to the Law of Moses, accepted only the first five books of scripture as authoritative. They believed heartily in an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth punishment. They did not recognize a final resurrection or many other rituals or details of the Law the Pharisees believed because they accepted only the Torah.

Despite their conservative approach to Judaism, their wealth, power, and cooperation with Rome labeled them Hellenistic. The people despised them and looked for ways to overthrow their tight rule over the priesthood. Several sects grew out of the populace, including the more familiar Essenes and Pharisees.

If the Sadducees were the far-right in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees represented the far-left. They wanted to overthrow the current reign of the Sadducees and take control of the priesthood. The Pharisees believed in all the scriptures’ authority in the current Hebrew Bible, which includes the Wisdom Books and the Prophets. They believe in bodily resurrection, after which a final judgment will separate God’s chosen people and proselytes to Israel’s God and reward them in the ‘age to come.’

While appearing pious and godly in public, the Pharisees funded, plotted, and planned several revolts to overthrow the Sadducees and the Roman occupation to rid the nation of both entities. The Pharisees would gladly break their own laws to rid the country of their enemies, no matter who they were.

Politics! Isn’t amazing how we have not changed in 2,000 years—party attacking party. Behind the scenes, action stirring up trouble to do more name-calling and pointing out flaws than announcing what the party stands for and how it will accomplish what it says it will do for the people. Dirt uncovered or made up and splashed across whatever grapevine is handy. Say it enough times, and it must be true, right? Have the right person announce it, and it must be true, right? Put it on the right platform, and it must be true, right? We have become so gullible on both sides; quite frankly, we are pretty pathetic as a nation when it comes to politics.

One difference between the Sadducees and Pharisees and our political parties now is that at least they came together for one purpose – to get rid of Jesus. Here’s one example out of many that didn’t work.

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,”  ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
This is the greatest and first commandment.
And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40 NIV)

    The Sadducees tried to trapped Jesus with their question about marriage at the resurrection. Jesus confirms the resurrection but blasts their misunderstanding of what the resurrection is like and their misunderstanding about scriptures, declaring God is God of the living, not the dead. The Sadducees slink away defeated. So their enemies, the Pharisees, take up the battle against Jesus at the Temple.

This scene is different to me because I see so little common ground among the people we send to Washington, the politicians. I know it is not true of the neighbors around me, or the people who live across town from me, or the owners of the stores downtown or their workers. I know it’s not true of the average American citizen. I believe deep inside, most of us have a lot more in common than we have against each other.

Like the people in almost every country I’ve visited, I believe most of us want a few things in life. We want a stable economy and standard of living that makes us comfortable, not necessarily rich or wealthy. We want our kids to have a better life than we did. We want to know we can walk the streets at night without the risk of being mugged or killed. We want to sleep at home in safety. We want to worship in the way we choose without ridicule, harassment, or government involvement. We want basic services at a reasonable cost, police, fire, water, sewage, healthcare, and the like. We want honest men and women in elected positions who serve the people instead of growing their bank accounts on the people’s backs.

Christians should live as good citizens of the country where they live, act as the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves, and do something about injustice, poverty, and crime. But Christians must also live as citizens of the Kingdom of God first. That is our true citizenship, and it means we must live by Jesus’ commands. All authority in heaven and earth is placed in him, and his command is given in the verses we just read. Love God and love your neighbor. Elsewhere Jesus tells us you can’t love the invisible God you can’t see; if you don’t love your neighbor, you can see.

Does name-calling fall within the rights of a Kingdom of God citizen? I don’t think so. Does rioting fall within those rights? I don’t think so. Does violence against another meet the criteria? Again, not according to what I see in Jesus. We need to stand up for what is right, but not in the way it happens on Facebook or some of our streets today. Even what we see on C-Span or the news outlets, how interviews, or more like interrogations, are handled, they do not reflect a citizen of the Kingdom spirit. Am I judging? Yes. I think when we see behavior clearly violating the spirit of God’s law, that’s not judging the heart. I can’t see a person’s heart and cannot evaluate a person’s state before God. But I can certainly identify behavior so outlandishly against what Jesus would accept in his Kingdom.

It’s time we stop and think before we act. If we are children of the Kingdom, we need to act like it. We need to share the gospel, not hatred. We need to remind ourselves and others that Jesus was crucified, died, and buried. He was raised from the dead and is alive, sitting as King of the world. Put your faith and hope in him. Pray a lot about this election. Go and vote your conscience. Someone will win, someone will lose in this election, but it doesn’t change the real ruler. That will never change. Jesus is and always will be the King of kings.

One day, ‘every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, that Jesus is the Lord.’ There is no other.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

Check out this episode!

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Today, we are further from the first-century church than was King David. Life for the shepherd king resembled life for Jesus and his followers more than it does for us. We sometimes find it challenging to remember that because of the way the Renaissance portrayed the first century. We see paintings of the Roman Jesus instead of the Jewish Jesus. We see him peacefully meandering through the hillsides and large crowds welcoming him wherever he goes with no interruption or opposition in those paintings.

I don’t think that’s what life was like for Jesus and the Jews of his day. We forget Israel and Jerusalem, in particular, found itself an occupied nation filled with Roman soldiers. Jerusalem’s priests continually worked to quell revolts among the people so they could keep their tenuous line of authority with Herod and Caesar. Revolutionaries popped up among the populace often enough that crucifixes were not an uncommon sight along the Judean and Galilean roads as examples of what would happen to those who sought to overthrow their Roman yoke.

The Jews didn’t like the Romans. They didn’t like their taxes. They didn’t like the fact that taxes must be paid with Roman coins with Caesar’s depiction stamped on one side and the pronouncement’ son of god’ on the other. The blasphemous thought grated at them every time they even saw one of those coins. That’s part of the hypocrisy of their question to Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees should have shuddered at producing a coin, much less had one within the Temple grounds.

Jesus spent most of his ministry outside Jerusalem to the very end, mostly, I think, to avoid what he knew would result when he spoke of the kingdom of God within the city. The priests would protect their positions with Rome. Rome would swiftly end anything they saw as a threat to their empire. Any talk of a new king constituted a threat to Caesar. How could Rome not execute another proclaimed Messiah, King of the Jews? Jesus was not the first to hang on their crosses, and he would not be the last. But he would be the only one the grave could not hold.

So, let’s take a different picture of what Israel might look like in those three years of Jesus’ ministry. Instead of the serene country hillsides and quiet fishing villages, let’s move the scene forward into what it might have looked like in our modern world. Picture Chicago, Seattle, Portland, New York, and other major cities protesting the police’s overreach in some of those cases. Riots spring up, rocks thrown, torches lit, crowds gather around public buildings.

But there is one huge difference. In our cities, those protests and riots run their course. Buildings burned. Some innocents and guilty were injured. Some arrested. But imagine living in a police state like Rome or China. That first night of protest, the army comes out in full force. The protesters find themselves surrounded. Gunshots begin to ring out. Within a few minutes, it’s over. The protesters no longer stand shouting with fists raised, ready to let the government know their grievances. They lay dead in the streets.

That’s Jerusalem in Jesus’ day. Centurions kept peace with their companies of soldiers. When rocks were thrown, they retaliated with swords and spears. The Romans showed no mercy. They conquered wherever they went because everyone knew their reputation and most often surrendered before forced to fight. Paying taxes seemed better than lying in a grave.

Did Jesus hide? I don’t think he hid from authorities, but as he often mentioned, he lived on a timetable. Jesus marched toward a specific destiny at one particular time. He would be the Passover Lamb and did not want to find himself in the hands of the authorities at the wrong time. Consequently, we find most of his teaching outside Jerusalem in Judea and Galilea’s hills, and sometimes in Samaria.

Why all that background? It’s to introduce us to a story that hits too close to home for the church today. It comes from an event recorded by Luke in the seventeenth chapter:

11 As Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, he passed along the borderlands between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into one particular village he was met by ten men with virulent skin diseases who stayed at some distance from him.

13 ‘Jesus, Master!’ they called out loudly. ‘Have pity on us!’

14 When Jesus saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were healed.

15 One of them, seeing that he had been healed, turned back and gave glory to God at the top of his voice. 16 He fell on his face in front of Jesus’ feet and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.

17 ‘There were ten of you healed, weren’t there?’ responded Jesus. ‘Where are the nine? 18 Is it really the case that the only one who had the decency to give God the glory was this foreigner?

19 ‘Get up, and be on your way,’ he said to him. ‘Your faith has saved you.’ Luke 17:11-19 NTE)

Jesus continued his ministry, mostly in small villages outside the major metropolitan areas of Israel. Herod had already arrested and killed his cousin, John, because of his ministry. Jesus’ message was more inflammatory and revolutionary than John’s. His disciples declared him Messiah. Herod knew from the prophecies that meant one thing. He would reign over all the Jews and all the nations. Jesus was a threat to Herod and Caesar.

Still, Jesus spread his message. Repent! The kingdom of God is near. His kingdom is at hand. But Jesus’ kingdom didn’t bring speak of violent overthrow of an oppressive government. He didn’t expect to use armed soldiers to fight against another army. Jesus spoke of fighting with peace, love, mercy, forgiveness, grace. Characteristics that describe the loving Father he knew created all things and allowed the kings of the world to hold their positions to bring some order into the chaos that would otherwise run rampant throughout his world.

We saw how the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or Capitol Hill Organized Protest turned out. It didn’t take very long until what was supposed to be a peaceful, everyone equal, no racism, no police area of Seattle included burned-out buildings, businesses looted, and owners threatened, robberies, rapes, and murders with a small group of armed men deciding they were in charge. Autonomy turned into anarchy in the small area. Peace and love turned to violence and fear. God’s word says he puts authorities in place to keep us in line because we can’t do it ourselves. We are broken people because of sin. We cave to our misdirected desires and satisfy them in ways that break the communities in which we live.

Still, Jesus spread his message. He knew our hearts. He knew most would reject him. Only one of the ten men healed of their dreadful disease returned to thank him and give praise to God. Did the other nine return after they went to the priest? We don’t know, but based on the story, I doubt it. Did they run to their families to share the good news first and then come back? Probably not, according to the tone of Jesus’ words.

We haven’t changed much across the millennia of our existence. We think we become smarter with more information at our disposal. We think we know more than our ancestors. We think we possess advanced intelligence. But I think we may digress in wisdom as we look at the plight of humanity. We have all this information at our fingertips, but what do we do with it to help each other? Instead, we try to line our pockets with more. We build bigger barns, drive faster cars, get the corner office with bigger windows.

But do we give credit to the One who enables us to do any of those things? And do we share the surplus as God asks? Do we take care of the widows and orphans, the definition of those who could not take care of themselves in his day? Do we share the message that Jesus came to fulfill Abraham’s side of the covenant, to finally share the blessings of God with all the nations of the world – to rescue them from themselves?

Jesus came to rescue us – from sin, death, sickness, economic woes, environmental problems, societal strife, all the things that plague humanity since Adam and Eve first broke their covenant with God and ate the fruit he forbade them to eat. Jesus began that work through his message. He fulfilled that work in his resurrection. He begins to make it available to all who believe in him as Messiah, the son of the living God.

Will all believe? I don’t think so. Will all be rescued? Again, I don’t think so. When drowning, you must grab the life ring before it can save you. While it just floats beside you and you refuse to grab it, the life ring can do nothing for you. God gives us every opportunity to grab on to his message, to believe in him, to experience his forgiving mercy and grace. But we must also take that step of faith and reach out to him as well. He reaches far past the middle, but we must also reach out to him. He wants believers in his kingdom, not puppets. It is always my choice and yours.

Ten were told to show themselves to the priest. One returned to praise God. One received the words from Jesus, “Your faith has saved you, healed you, rescued you.” The other nine? We don’t know their fate for sure. I only know I want to stand with that one and know for sure I’m in that small crowd who falls at Jesus’ feet and praises him for his saving grace. How about you?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scriptures are taken from The New Testament for Everyone copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.

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