Father Stephen De Young: Here we have another “now it happened”. So, we have another transition here:

Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”

Now, this isn’t one of the disciples, this is just one of that big group in the crowd, right? They say, “Jesus, I’ll follow you anywhere you go. You’re great.”

And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

So what’s Jesus trying to say there? “If you think you’re following me into the palace, and you’re going to get a nice estate out of the deal, you got another thing coming.” Because right now Jesus was homeless and was a peasant, but what’s the expectation of him as the Messiah? “This is just a temporary thing. This is just right now it’s like when David was on the run, but then afterwards he became King. And then the people who were good to him when he was on the run from Saul, they were in good stead.”

And so, they don’t understand when Christ says that the Messiah has to suffer and then enter to his glory, that pattern, they’re thinking “Oh, on this earth like David”, they’re not thinking that that glory is the glory of God Himself that we saw on Transfiguration, that the suffering involves his death and dying to the things of this world. They’re still looking for the things of this world. So Christ is saying, “If you’re thinking by following me, you’re going to get the things of this world, you’re better off following a fox or a bird because at least they have some place for you to sleep at night.”

Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”

Now, we saw that, remember, when Jesus was calling the disciples, he would come and tell them to “follow me”. So as they’re traveling, he sees someone, he says to that person, come follow me. And the word that’s used for follow there is not sort of just follow the leader, like walk in the direction I’m walking. Follow me there is essentially become my follower, become my disciple, join the group.

But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”

I don’t like how the Orthodox Study Bible has this translated, “those who are at my house”, like he’s got house guests or something, it’s literally “those who are in my house”, like household, meaning his extended family, because people live in these extended family units. So he’s saying, “I need to go say goodbye to my family, let them know I’m going off to become your disciple.”

But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

So what we see is an idea developing here. We first have, if you’re going to follow me, you’re going to have to turn your back on the things of this world. And then we see that includes responsibilities and duties, like burying your father, and ultimately that includes your family. Now, some people like to take this out of context, and try and say, “Oh, Jesus is saying you have to shun your family. Jesus is contradicting the commandment because the commandment says, ‘Honor your father and mother’. And he’s saying, oh, don’t bury your father.”

Is that Jesus’s point here? Jesus’s point here isn’t if you become a Christian, you don’t have any responsibilities to anyone else. That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is if you’re going to follow Christ, there’s going to be conflicts, there’s going to be conflicts. And this was very real. For who? For St. Luke’s audience. Because when St. Luke’s friend St. Paul came to these cities in the Roman Empire and came to these Gentiles that said, “You’re going to become a Christian,” we tend to think of the way we think of things. It’s like, “Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to give up my Sunday mornings to go to church.” But that wasn’t it. If you became a Christian in one of those cities, guess what? You were probably about to become a vegetarian, because pretty much all the meat in the meat market had been sacrificed to idols. So you’re going to have to change what you eat. All of the social functions, all of the city-wide festivals, social functions, all involved sacrifices to idols, right? You’re not going to have to pull out of all of the city and civic life. You’re going to have to pull out of politics completely because you’re not going to be able to sacrifice to the emperor. You’re not going to be able to participate with your own family because your own family has household gods, and your father is going to offer sacrifices to them. You’re not going to be able to eat at his dinner table anymore.

If you’re going to be a follower of Christ, you’re going to have to give all that up. You’re going to have to give all that up. And so what Jesus is saying here in his context to the peasants, but St. Luke is making the point here. If you’re going to follow Christ, you’re going to have to be willing to give up all those things. And when you give up those things, that might alienate your family. You might have people criticizing you that you’re not doing your duty to your family and to your city. You’re not a patriot anymore. You’re going to have to give up. You may lose your house, you may lose your trade, your job. You may lose all this. And if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not going to be able to follow Christ, because Christ is on his way to Jerusalem to give up his life.

You’re going to have to be willing to give all those things up too. And if any of those things is more important to you than following Christ, then you’re not going to get to the kingdom of God. That’s what he ultimately said. So you do not need to repudiate your family or your responsibilities or quit your job to become a Christian. But you might at some point have to draw the line and say, “This is something I as a Christian can’t do,” and that might cost you your job or cost you a friendship, or cost you a family relationship, or cost you one of these things. And so we have to be ready to, if and when that time comes.

We’ve been blessed in this country until now that, here in the United States at least, we haven’t had to do as much of that. There are always issues, but it hasn’t been as big an issue as it is, say, in the Middle East, when you’re a Christian and you have to draw the line, and being a Christian rather than a Muslim means you’re not going to be able to have certain jobs or go certain places or do certain things. But that time may very well come in the United States. As I’ve said before, no one in Russia in 1910 thought they were ever going to face a bullet for being a Christian, but most of them did eight years later. So that could turn around awfully fast, and as Christians, we have to always be prepared for the time that may come when we have to choose between Christ and our possessions, our job, our family, our livelihood, or even our life.

So, chapter ten:

After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go.

So this is a little bit similar to what we saw before with the disciples when he sent them into the villages in Galilee. But now he’s appointed 70 people, and it is probably 70. I’ve talked before about how numbers get a little sketchy because of course we don’t have numerals. When we think of numbers, we think of numerals. Those are called Arabic numerals because they don’t come into existence until about the 8th century, and we get them from Arabic. So they don’t exist at this time in Hebrew and Aramaic and in Greek, what’s used are letters, essentially, are used for numbers and when there’s not a lot of difference in strokes between the letters that they’re being handwritten sometimes what exactly the number is can get a little iffy. And of course, we’re all familiar with Roman numerals, which are letters, right?

And so it’s either 70 or 72 is what I’m getting at. We have the same issue with the Septuagint. Actually, the Greek translation of the Old Testament traditionally was made by 70 or 72 translators, we’re not exactly sure. So we have the same thing here. It may have been 72, but traditionally these are referred to as the 70. So we have sort of an inner circle that we’ve seen around Jesus of Peter, James, and John, who we took up the mountain of Transfiguration, who he took in when he raised a girl from the dead. Then we’ve got the twelve. So a concentric circle, now we’ve got the 70 around them. And we’re going to see when we get into the Book of Acts that there’s going to be a group of 120 that’s sort of around that of people who are following Jesus sort of through his whole ministry. We’ve seen there are big crowds, but there’s only about 120 who stick around for sort of the broad sweep of it. This is the 70. These are people who Jesus picks out of those following Him and notice he sends them ahead of Him the way he sent people ahead to the Samaritans.

So he’s on this journey to Jerusalem. He sends them out ahead to the villages to go and do what? When he called this person in chapter 9, he said, what? “Go and preach the kingdom of God.” It’s doing the same thing the disciples were. They’re going out and preaching the message that Jesus is preaching to all of these villages before Jesus passes through.

Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.  Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the road.  But whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’  And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you.  And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.  Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you.  And heal the sick there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’  But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, ‘The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.’  But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for that city.

So a couple of things here. You notice this is almost the same thing he told the disciples. Remember he said, “Don’t take any money with you, don’t take any extra clothes, don’t take any extra shoes, just go. And wherever you stay, don’t go house to house means don’t try and look for a better offer. Whoever receives you in that town, stay with them. If the rich guy down the block decides to invite you, don’t sort of try and trade your way up for better food or stuff. Take what is offered to you to proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Notice also, “the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few”.

Lest we think that as we’re going to see, because of course as we get closer to Christ’s crucifixion, everyone, including the twelve disciples are all going to reject them and turn on him. But St. Luke is making the point here, this is one of the differences between St. Luke’s gospel and for example St. Matthew, is that St. Luke, what he says here, the harvest is great. He’s saying there are a lot of these Judeans, Samaritans, these other people who are going to end up becoming Christians, right? Jesus is here essentially saying there’s almost more people here ready to receive the gospel than there are people to preach it to them. That’s what he’s essentially saying here.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel he very much presents it as Jesus comes to the Jewish people, they reject him and so the gospel ends up going to the Gentiles. But that’s not how St. Luke presents it in his Gospel and in Acts, he tends to focus on the fact that there is this body of Jewish people who do accept Christ and who form the basis of the church and then the Samaritans, the Gentiles, are added in to the Jews who received Christ. Now that’s not a contradiction because there were both a number of Jewish people who accepted Christ and a large number of Jewish people who rejected Christ. St. Matthew is choosing to focus on sort of the more negative on the rejection. St. Luke is choosing to focus on that group, that remnant that accepted. But both are true, it’s just a question of focus.

But now notice, is this a contradiction? Because we just had James and John wanting to call down fire and wipe out these towns that rejected Jesus, and now Jesus is saying, “Well if these towns reject you, when I said to you man, it’s going to be worse than Sodom where fire came down from heaven and wiped out Sodom.” So is this a contradiction? Is Jesus basically now saying exactly what James and John said and he told him to knock it off? Well, notice the key thing here. James and John wanted to call down fire on those towns, right then. “How dare they reject you? Let’s wipe them out.” But what does Jesus say? It’s a place where details are important. “It will be more tolerable in that day.” What day? The day of the Lord from the Old Testament. The day of judgment.

So, this isn’t a contradiction. This is the important bookend. The point Jesus made with James and John was, “I didn’t come here to judge the world.” Jesus didn’t have to come for the world to be judged. He came for salvation. But lest you misinterpret that, lest you take that misinterpret and say, “Oh, well, God is just a God of love. He just loves everybody. So there’s no judgment, there’s no wrath at all. Right? Everybody’s fine, right?” Jesus makes the point that no, there is judgment, there is wrath, but that judgment, that wrath are preserved for that day.

Meaning what? Meaning we’ve been given this life, we’ve been given this time when God is patient with us in order to repent, in order to repent and receive his salvation before that day comes. But if that day comes and we’re still rejecting Christ, then there’s a reckoning.

It’s very common today for both. A lot of well-meaning Christians who tend towards universalism. Who want to just say, “Oh, everybody’s saved” on the one hand. And then on the other hand. For people who are not Christians. Some of our atheist friends who want to try to make this juxtaposition to try and make God seem cruel and mean and angry. To draw this juxtaposition between God’s mercy and his justice or his mercy and his wrath. These are opposites or these are competing things. You have to either believe in a God of mercy or believe in a God of wrath. One of the two.

And the problem is, those two things are not opposed to each other. They’re not opposed to each other. And I can give you some very common-sense examples from our own world. When OJ Simpson was let off on the murder charges, did you run into a lot of people who said, “This is a triumph of mercy and compassion?” “I’m so happy. I’m so happy. Even if he did kill his wife. You know, we need to be about mercy and compassion, and I’m so glad that this great grace was shown to him”. I didn’t hear anybody say that, right? There were some people who thought he was innocent, but most of the people I know thought he did it, and they were upset at the injustice of it.

Or, having lived in Southern California when the Rodney King riots happened. When those police officers who had beaten Rodney King were let off without charges. The community in Los Angeles, let me tell you, since most of you I don’t think were nearby, but you probably saw it on TV, were not overjoyed at the triumph of mercy that these poor officers were allowed to continue their careers as policemen and were not thrown in prison. What great mercy and compassion was shown to them, right? No, there was anger at injustice. So for God to show mercy and compassion on the victims of violence, he has to show justice towards the people who perpetrate violence.

For God to show mercy on someone who is the victim of our sins, the people we hurt when we sin, the people whom we harm, for Him to show mercy on them and have compassion for them, he has to show justice toward those sins. They’re flip sides of the same coin. So God’s justice and his holiness aren’t opposed to his love and his mercy. They’re required by it. Orphans and widows are not going to be mistreated and abused and have God do nothing. That’s not a merciful or loving God any more than it’s a just God. So these two things go together.

And so, this isn’t a contradiction here in St. Luke’s Gospel, these are the two sides of the coin. Christ came to deliver us from that wrath that is stored up against us, the wrath we deserve, the justice we deserve, the judgment we deserve, for the things we’ve done, that we fully deserve, that we fully earned. He’s here to deliver us from that, to heal us from the damage we’ve done if we’re willing to receive it. That’s the purpose of what Christ is doing. But if we’re not willing to receive it, it’s still there. It is still a reality. It will still befall us. And we, as James and John should have, as followers of Christ, who possess the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God should have that same attitude in that we go and we proclaim the mercy, the love, the kindness of God, the salvation that’s available in Christ.

But the flip side of that is also the warning that Christ is returning to judge the living and the dead, and that there will be a reckoning, there will be accountability for the things that we do and that we’ve done and that those two things go together. And so Jesus continues here:

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!”

Two of the villages that didn’t receive him, his disciples.

“For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.  And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”

So Tyre and Sidon were the capitals of what? They’re the capitals of Phoenicia, the Phoenician empire. That’s where Queen Jezebel was from. These were the centers of the worship of Baal and Molech. So these are sort of your prototypical, aside from Sodom that he already mentioned, these are your prototypical, wicked, Gentile, idolatrous cities. And what Jesus is saying is, if these people in ancient times had seen the miracles that he was doing in the midst of these people and heard the gospel of the kingdom that he was proclaiming, they would have repented the way the people of Nineveh repented with Jonah. But these cities, which are full of people who have received the Old Testament, who have received God’s blessings, they have every advantage of the world who should recognize Christ for who he is. They’ve rejected Him. And so Tyre and Sidon, because they didn’t receive those things will be better off on the day of judgment. What he’s getting at there is what happens on the day of judgment is accountability. Part of that accountability is being accountable for what we’ve received from God, and ancient Tyre and Sidon in the Phoenician Empire, God didn’t send prophets to them that we know of, didn’t send prophets to them. He didn’t give them His Law, didn’t give them the Scriptures. The Messiah didn’t come to them. They will be held accountable for what they receive. Those who have received more are going to be held even more accountable.

And this gets back to the epistle reading we heard today from Hebrews. What is there for us if we neglect so great a salvation? We’ve received even more than these people have, in the church, the faith, in the Scriptures. And we’re going to be held accountable for that, for what we do with it, for whether we really receive it, put it into practice, whether we hear it and do it. And notice he says to the 70, he who hears you, the 70, hears me. He who rejects you rejects me. He who rejects me, rejects him who sent me. So there’s three pieces there.

Why is that first part important? Well, St. Luke is writing to a bunch of people who didn’t meet Christ in person, bodily, at least during his earthly life. They weren’t there for this. But if they’ve heard St. Paul, who Christ sent, if they’ve heard St. Peter, who Christ sent, if they’ve heard St. Luke, who Christ sent, they’ve heard Christ because they’re proclaiming the same Gospel.

And then number two, he who rejects you rejects me. So you can’t be like, “Well, I like Jesus, and I like the things he had to say. This St. Paul guy, I don’t know. This other stuff in the Bible.” We get some of that today. “Oh, I like Jesus. I like the things he had to say.” Usually it’s sort of a caricature of the things he had to say. If you start actually quoting some of the things Jesus said, they get sort of antsy. But, “I like Jesus. Just this other stuff in the Bible, right?” There’s no distinction there. If you reject what’s in Philippians, if you reject what’s in Proverbs, if you reject what’s in Revelation, it’s not just the red letters that are important, it’s the black letters too. It’s the whole thing. It’s a package deal. And then finally, especially important in this context, “he who rejects me rejects him who sent me”, because who is he talking to here at the time? He’s sending them to speak to Jewish people, to Judeans. Meaning if they reject Christ and claim they worship the God of the Old Testament, claim they worship God the Father, they’re wrong, according to Jesus.

And this is going to get developed a lot more in St. John’s Gospel, in a much more polemical way. I mean, St. John is going to quote Jesus, saying, you’re the children of your father the devil. That’s kind of extreme the other way.

But why is it true, this isn’t just a statement out of the blue, that to follow God you have to follow Christ? This goes back to the previous passage we were just talking about when they want to call down the fire from heaven on the villages. These two passages sort of go together. They dovetail. What does he say to them? You don’t know the Spirit, you don’t know who God is. The way we know who God is, is who Christ is and what he does. So if you reject Christ, you’re rejecting God. You can’t claim you know who God the Father is and reject Christ. Because they’re one, right? They’re one. You can’t separate out the two.

Interlocutor: So the Unitarians are not… [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Yes. To put it in more modern terms, there’s only one God, and it’s the Holy Trinity. So there can’t be a way to follow the God that rejects Christ, because Christ is God. They’re inseparable. Christ and his father are inseparable.

So, verse 17:

Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”

So they come back and they’re excited. They’re fired up. “Not only were we healing people,” which he told them to do, “Proclaiming this message, but we were even casting out demons. We were telling demons what to do, and they were doing it.” Remember what we said before? We tend to think of demons just as evil spirits, but demons daimon in Greek is what the Romans called most of their gods. So, what they’re saying is, in your name, you have authority even over these things that are worshiped by the Gentiles. So again, who does that make Jesus? But that’s why they’re so impressed with this. That’s why this is the pinnacle. Even the demons are subject to us.

And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.  Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

There’s two parts of first of all, we get another case where Jesus sort of identifies who he is. I saw Satan fall from heaven. Who does that make Jesus? Who was around when that happened? Not any humans, right? Not any humans were around to witness that. Well, “when” is a tricky question because before God created the universe, there wasn’t time, really.

They’re amazed because Jesus’s name has the authority to command demons. And Jesus is saying, “Hey, I saw when they all got chucked, when this all happened.”

Interlocutor: It’s past tense, so this is within time?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, saw. But what is before there was time mean? Before is a temporal word. It was before any time, technically.

Interlocutor: Is that when the earth and the void were filled, like in Genesis 1?

Fr. Stephen: Well, it was before that. That’s not something we can wrap our head around. That’s not something we can understand.

Interlocutor: There wasn’t any time…?

Fr. Stephen: Before the universe was created? No.

But then he says, “Behold, I give you the authority to trample serpents and scorpions over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” If Jesus can give them that authority, what does that mean? It means he already has it. He already has it. Notice how he says it. This is important in terms of our understanding of the Scriptures as a whole, because sometimes you get this presentation, like the old Frank Peretti books, this guy thing where you’ve got sort of in this corner, God, and in this corner Satan, and they’re having a fight and who’s going to win, right? That’s not the presentation of scripture. He doesn’t say, I’m giving you power to fight back against Satan says, I’m giving you authority to trample him under foot. Right? Remember the Book of Job, Satan sort of shows up in heaven and sort of asks God’s permission to go and torment Job. He has to get permission. He can’t do anything, right? That’s the authority we’re talking about here. Satan is rebelling against God’s authority. But they’re still under it. They still can’t do anything without him letting them. So Jesus has this authority, right?

Now, you might think from the first statement, “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” Well, that gives you a couple of possibilities, actually, right? God was there, but the angels were there too, right? St. Michael the Archangel is the one who threw them out. You could say, “Oh, well, okay, maybe Jesus is an angel,” but does an angel have the authority to… every time we’ve seen angels, right? Remember when the Archangel Gabriel came to Daniel, he said, “The reason I’m so late is I was fighting with the Prince of Persia,” or St. Michael the Archangel contesting with Satan, right? Angels. Demons are angels. So demons and angels can fight, right?

God doesn’t fight demons because God has authority over so this is pretty clearly saying of our available options, Jesus is God, once again, this is saying fairly clearly here. Then this is important because you will see people like Bart Ehrman on the History Channel or being interviewed on NPR, who will straight out say this is a blanket statement that the Synoptic Gospels nowhere say that Jesus is God. We’ve seen a dozen places in St. Luke’s Gospel and we’re only halfway through, right? But there’s nowhere, because the phrase “Jesus is God” does not occur, right? But St. Luke is very clearly presenting Jesus as God. And here’s another place. If he saw Satan fall from Heaven, we’ve got two options. He’s either God or he’s an angel. And if he has authority to trample demons underfoot, that leaves God. That’s the only option here. But notice how he concludes, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven. He’s reiterating what he’s already said, right? You’re happy and excited because you have power, right? You just did these impressive miracles. You just did these wondrous things, and so now you’re happy, right? He’s saying, “That’s not what you should be happy about. You should be happy that you’re finding salvation. You should be happy that you’re finding the mercy that I came to bring. You should be happy that when the day of judgment comes, your name is going to be in the book of life, and that you’re not going to face judgment. That’s what you should be happy about.”

He’s trying to reorient them from their sort of power. Fantasies of overthrowing the Romans and this kind of thing. Power and position and all these things to this is what should be your concern. And this is what should make you joyful.

In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.  All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

So this is building off what we just saw earlier in the passage, right? First of all, that we see this junction in terms of who the followers of Christ are. Now, remember, this was one of the primary criticisms of the early Christians by the Romans, was that the Christians were all a bunch of undesirables. There’s a bunch of slaves and a bunch of women, a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. And these Jewish peasant nobodies, that was their criticism. This is a religion for low lives, right? This is a lower-class religion.

Well, Christ here turns that on its head. He’s praising God. That the one who God is going to reveal Himself to are these that ne’er-do-wells, right? The undesirables. And that the people who think they’re wise, the people sitting in Jerusalem, the chief priests, the elders, Herod in his palace, the Emperor the Roman governors right, are clueless, so full of their own quote-unquote “wisdom”. But then notice all things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is, except the Son and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. This is again making the point the way we know who God is, is through Jesus Christ. It’s through Jesus Christ. That’s the only way we have knowledge of God and who he is.

And this is an important beginning point of Christian theology. We can’t know God in his essence. God is not like us or anything else in the creation because he’s uncreated. God is God, but because in the person of Jesus Christ, God enters into his creation because God becomes man. And the person of Jesus Christ, we can know man, we can know human beings, because we are human beings. And so through the person of Jesus Christ we come to know who God is.

And so this is what it means when we read in the Matins service where we say about Jesus, “Thou art our God, and we know none other beside thee.” That’s not denying the Trinity, right? That’s not denying the Trinity. That’s saying apart from Christ, we don’t know anything about God, who Jesus is, not an aspect of who God is or a piece of who God is or part of our theology. Jesus is the whole thing. The only things we know about the Father are that he’s the Father of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is his image. And so from our knowledge of Jesus Christ, we know about Him.

The only thing we know about the Holy Spirit, or that he’s the spirit of Christ, that he’s given to us by Christ and that he shows us Christ. So Christ is at the center of everything we do, our theology, our worship, our prayer, and the Scriptures. The Old Testament is not a book about God the Father, and then the New Testament is a book about Jesus. The whole Scriptures, as we’ve seen, as we went through the Old Testament, hopefully, if I was doing my job well, we saw as we went through the Old Testament that the Old Testament was about Jesus.

Then He turned to His disciples and said privately,

Okay, so he said that publicly to everyone when the 70 returned. Now he speaks just to his disciples, just to the twelve, and says:

Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it.”

This is dovetailing, this is the positive side of what he said negatively about Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum. He was saying, if these other people have seen what you saw, they would have repented and you didn’t. So now you’re judged. Now he’s saying to this, I was blessed. Are you because you get to see this. Who are the people? Who he’s talking about, who wanted to see? The prophets and kings. That’s the Old Testament. These are the saints of the Old Testament, the old covenant. King David longed… he wrote about Jesus, but he longed to see Christ in person and deceive his coming. Moses longed to see Jesus coming. When we were reading the prophets and they were prophesying God’s deliverance that was going to come after the exile, this is what they were prophesying. This is what they wanted to see. This is what they wanted to happen. So he’s reiterating there, Christ is the core of what the Old Testament was all about, the core of what the Jewish religion was all about. And so if you missed that, the Jewish religion without Christ has lost its core.