• Hello and welcome to How to How to Take Over the World.
• Jesus of Nazareth is the most influential person of all time. There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world currently, representing about a third of the world’s population.
• There is no one on earth, outside of a few random uncontacted tribes, who does not know who Jesus is.
• And that seems normal to us. Christianity has been around for 2,000 years.
• But forget what you know. How remarkable is it that this occurred from a man who never traveled more than 150 miles from home in his adult life. Someone with no formal higher education. Someone who died before he was my age.
• I want you to imagine that you time travel to the year 4,000, okay 2,000 years from now. And you are looking around at the flying cars and you manage to talk to someone who explains what the world is like. And you find out that 10 billion people, a third of the world’s population follow the teachings of someone named Pierre. He was born in a small coastal town near Paris and he never left Spain. He only had a few hundred followers when he died but now his religion is the largest on earth.
• How desperate would you be to know what it was about this person and his teachings that led to this situation?
• So that is what we’re going to look at today. I’m not coming at this from a Christian perspective, I’m not going to try to convince you to believe in Jesus. I am just trying to take a look at the historical Jesus and what it was that has led him to take over the world.
• Having said that, I am going to be using the four gospels, the books of Matthew Mark Luke and John, to analyze his life.
• They aren’t historical documents. They certainly are not correct in every minute detail. But for one thing, the Jesus as presented in the gospels is the one who took over the world. So that is who we want to understand. If non-Christians are correct that he was just a man and that the miracles attested to in the Bible are either exaggerations or fabrications, then it’s still the Jesus of the Bible who we want to understand. Even if he is more literary character than historical person, it is that character who captured the world’s imagination.
• And secondly, there are a lot of reasons to believe that the gospels are correct at least in the broad details of Jesus’s life. There is one school of thought that suggests that the gospels were written by people who were by people who were fifteen degrees of contact removed from Jesus and have no relation to the truth whatsoever. But I just don’t find that reasoning very compelling.
• People have a number of biases. And the gospel writers certainly had biases, these were not objective historians trying to write a non-biased account, obviously. But one bias people have is for the truth. Even when they are biased and have other motivations, people prefer to tell the truth where possible. The truth is always cleaner, simpler, and more easy to explain than lies.
• And in addition, you can see the writers of the gospels trying to wrestle with and explain inconvenient historical facts. If the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life have no relationship to his actual historical life whatsoever, then why do they include these facts?
• I’ll give one example. The virgin birth. The new testament scholar NT Wright writes
  
  • The Matthean birth story describes how a Galilean virgin named Mary, though pledged to Joseph, became pregnant ‘through the holy spirit’. Joseph was planning to set aside the marriage privately, on suspicion of infidelity, until an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him that ‘what is conceived in her is from the holy spirit’. Matthew adds an editorial remark that Jesus’ birth fulfils the words of Isaiah 7.14 about the virgin bearing a child who is to be called ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God with us’ (1.18–23). This is the more interesting in that we know of no pre-Christian readers of Isaiah who took the passage in this way. It seems far more likely that the story of Jesus’ extraordinary conception generated a search for relevant texts rather than (as has often been suggested) the other way round.
• So in other words, even if you take the non-Biblical view, which I think most of my listeners do, even if you think the virgin birth is a fabrication, it seems more likely that the virgin birth is trying to explain some dispute about Jesus’s heritage, most likely that Jesus’s mother indeed became pregnant before she was married, rather than a story created to match an ancient prophecy.
• Now that is not to say that everything in the Bible is historically accurate, I’ll talk about a couple of things that are questionable, but that was my long way of saying, I think the Jesus of the Bible does have some relationship to the historical figure, probably a very strong relationship, and he is worth studying.
• My sources for this episode are:
  
  • Jesus: A Biography From A Believer by Paul Johnson
  • The New Testament In Its World by NT Wright
  • And lastly of course The New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) - I used the King James Version
• I should mention that I was able to listen to the New Testament in my own voice, which was pretty cool. There is an old Jewish tradition that God speaks to you in your own voice, so if you have ever for example watched The Prince of Egypt, Val Kilmer voices Moses, and he also voices God.
  
  • Well, I was able to listen to the new testament using my own voice via Speechify. I uses Speechify for 80% of my research. Because I find I get through material way faster if I listen to it and read it at the same time. Seriously, I recommend that anyone try it. You won’t believe how much faster it is than just reading.
  • It is a superpower for learning quickly.
  • If you want to use it, go to speechify.com/Ben to get 15% off Speechify Premium
• With that said, let’s get into it, this is the life of Jesus.

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Context

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• The Jews were waiting for a messiah. Why? Essentially because of Roman conquest.
• Under the great king David, Israel is established as an independent kingdom and a regional Power. David’s son, Solomon, builds a beautiful temple that becomes the center, the beating heart, of Jewish worship.
• But then they are conquered by the Babylonians who destroy their temple and take the people into captivity. The Babylonians are overthrown by the Persians, who allow them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple.
• The temple is rebuilt, but then the Jews get new rulers when the Persians are overthrown by Alexander the Great.
• Efforts are made by some of Alexander’s successors to Hellenize the Jews, essentially bring them into conformity with Greek culture.
• The temple is taken and rededicated to Zeus, and pigs are sacrificed to him, which was a normal sacrifice by Greek standards, but pigs were unclean to Jews and this was highly offensive.
• Eventually, the Jews revolt under the leadership of Mattathias Maccabee and his five sons and win independence from this Greek kingdom. But it’s not very long lasting independence because they are soon once again conquered, this time by the Romans.
• The Romans are not as repressive as the Babylonians, but neither are they as hands-off as the Persians.
• Most offensively, Pompey the Great, the contemporary of Julius Caesar’s who conquers Judea, goes into the holy of holies, which was the most sacred part of the temple, the most sacred place in the world according to Jewish worship. He leaves the temple in tact, but entering the holy of holies was an act of defilement according to the Jews.
• Now the Romans often liked to rule places via client kings. In other words, you guys can keep your king, we don’t want to deal with your little squabbles, but that king reports to us.
• So they had a client king named Herod, who came to be known as Herod the Great, and he had a good relationship with the Romans. Culturally, he was pretty well Hellenized, I don’t think you would call him a sincere Jewish believer by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a lot of Jewish support because he renovated the second temple and greatly expanded it.
• So the Jews have their temple, they are allowed to worship in it, but they still resent Roman dominance over them. They want their independence.
• There were a thousand ways in which Roman rule bothered them. Some were big things, for example a Roman eagle stood at the entrance to the temple, letting the Jews know who was really in charge here. And some in small ways. In The New Testament in Its World, NT Wright highlights a story that I find hilarious about one religious riot in Jerusalem shortly after the life of Jesus. Listen to this. This is from the ancient historian Josephus:
• The Matthean birth story describes how a Galilean virgin named Mary, though pledged to Joseph, became pregnant ‘through the holy spirit’. Joseph was planning to set aside the marriage privately, on suspicion of infidelity, until an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him that ‘what is conceived in her is from the holy spirit’. Matthew adds an editorial remark that Jesus’ birth fulfils the words of Isaiah 7.14 about the virgin bearing a child who is to be called ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God with us’ (1.18–23). This is the more interesting in that we know of no pre-Christian readers of Isaiah who took the passage in this way. It seems far more likely that the story of Jesus’ extraordinary conception generated a search for relevant texts rather than (as has often been suggested) the other way round.
• Okay so a riot that ends up leading to thirty thousand dead starts because a Roman soldier moons the crowd and farts at them.
• So that is the kind of stuff that upset the Jews and made them yearn for a time when they would be free from Roman rule.
• I think there is just also a feeling of complete disruption.
• You are used to a certain way of life, and then the Romans completely upset it, bringing wealth and trade and new goods and new people. But then you can’t help but feel inferior to these people who have totally upended your world. Paul Johnson has a good summary:
• “THE WORLD INTO WHICH Jesus was born was harsh, cruel, violent, and unstable. It was also materialistic and increasingly wealthy. The great fact of geopolitics was Rome and its possessions, in the process of transforming itself from a republic into an empire. It now occupied the shores of the entire Mediterranean, from which one of its great men, Pompey, had driven all the pirates which once infested it, using ruthless methods of brutality, torture, and large-scale public executions. As a result, trade was expanding fast and many cities and individuals doubled their riches in the generation before Jesus was born.”
• And look I think there is some element of jealousy from religious leaders. Likes yes, the Romans are making things better in a lot of ways, but in so doing they are perhaps disrupting traditional ways of life in Judea and threatening the religious authorities’ hold on power.
• I mean listen to Paul Johnson’s description of Herod the Great, the client king who was ruling Judea under the Romans:
  
  • In what we now call Palestine, a similar calm prevailed at the time of Jesus’s birth, under the plutocratic tyranny of Herod the Great. For more than thirty years, this astute financier, who had made himself the richest individual in the entire empire, had by his subservience to the rulers of Rome (and by princely gifts) made himself master of the ancient kingdom of the Jews. He was the greatest builder of his age, creating a new port at Caesarea in Samaria, rebuilding and enlarging the Temple in Jerusalem, and building public baths, aqueducts, and what we would call shopping centers in half a dozen cities, as well as a ring of powerful fortresses, including the massive Antonia (named after Mark Antony) in Jerusalem, overlooking the Temple and his own enormous palace. He was a benefactor of the Jews on a colossal scale. But he was not popular among them. Only half Jewish by birth, and wholly Greek in his cultural tastes, he was regarded as heretical by the Jewish religious authorities for sponsoring Greek-style games, theaters, and music. He also had numerous wives and concubines, some of them Gentiles, and sired many children. Suspicious and cruel, he slaughtered over forty of his wives, children, and close relatives, often in circumstances of peculiar atrocity, for conspiracies, real or imaginary, against his rule and person. As his reign drew to a close—the last year of his life was the year of Jesus’s birth—his suspicions increased, and an atmosphere of paranoia prevailed at his court.
• Okay so obviously it’s a very beautiful and prosperous nation that he is creating but from a religious perspective the question is at what cost? For religious leaders and highly pious people, this prosperity is no boon at all, but a threat to their way of life.
  
  • NT Wright writes: This hellenistic setting formed a perpetual cultural and religious threat to the Jews, every bit as powerful as any political danger. The self-understanding of Jews at this time was determined by the pressing question of whether they should attempt to be distinct from this alien culture, and if so, how. Pressure to assimilate was strong in many quarters, especially in places outside Palestine like Egypt and Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Many Jews attempted to assimilate to hellenistic culture in various ways, ranging from token participation in Greek civic life all the way through to apostasy from Judaism.
  • I think Judaism at the turn of the millennium was in a similar place that Christianity is in right now. It’s sort of obviously in decline and in need of reform. But the question is what direction will that reform take? There are the rainbow flag denominations trying to take it in a more liberal direction, and then you have the rise of consciously reactionary Christian movements too. So the question is does Judaism adapt or resist? Herod and the Sadducees represented those who wanted to adapt. For those who want to resist, the Pharisees, the messiah is their great hope.
• The messiah was the one who would overthrow Roman rule, set up an independent Jewish religious kingdom and usher in a golden age of righteousness and freedom.
• So you have all of these movements that are preparing for the messiah and Israel’s restoration. One of the big ones are the Pharisees.
• They want to prepare the people. Make them holy in preparation for the coming of the Lord. They think okay, the reason that the messiah hasn’t come to free us yet is because we aren’t righteous enough.
• And so they are very intense about helping people observe the minutiae of every Mosaic law to assure that everyone is in constant compliance with religious rules and protocol.s
• This is where Rabbinic Judaism comes from. Judaism used to be less hardcore about their rules before the Pharisaic movement.
• Okay the Pharisees are not the only Jews who are waiting and looking for a messiah, but they are the most prominent sect that takes this attitude, and they are the most relevant to our story.
• So this is the world that Jesus is born into.
• He comes into the Jewish world at a time when many have a burning expectation of the imminent arrival of a messiah, a savior who will free Israel from their Roman oppressors.

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Early Life

• Jesus is of course born around 0 AD. I think many historians now place his birth a little before, maybe 4 BC. But it’s impossible to know with certainty. But he was born sometime around the year 0.
• According to the Bible, it is a miraculous conception to a virgin mother. As previously discussed.
• Also according to the Bible he was born in Bethlehem. Everyone agrees that Jesus was from a small town called Nazareth. According to the book of Luke however, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”
• And so there is a census of the Roman empire that requires everyone to travel to their ancestral homeland to be counted.
• So since Jesus’s father was a descendant of King David, the family had to travel to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. You know the story.
• Now it turns out, there are no records for a Roman census at the time of Jesus’s birth. The account of Luke is probably referring to the census of Quirinius which was a few years after Jesus’s birth.
• So I mean who knows, the point of this episode is not to point out every evidence for and against the new testament. Just for the sake of showing both sides honesty I’m pointing out that the popular account of Jesus’s birth does appear to have some inconsistencies.
• not only should they be taxed but they needed to travel to their ancestral homeland to be counted.
• This is the only time I’m going to comment on the historicity of the Bible. And I don’t think these accusations are particularly damning toward the overall veracity of the new testament. If you’re a believer, I wouldn’t let this upset you. I’m just saying that if you’re looking at this from a purely historical perspective of what do we know about this person? You’re likely to conclude that he was simply a young man from Nazareth.
• So according to the Bible Jesus’s family makes a quick detour to Egypt, which we won’t get into it. That may or may not be true. 
• But Nazareth is definitely where Jesus grew up.
• Nazareth is a small town in the region of the Sea of Galilee. It’s a few days walk from Jerusalem.
• It had a population of a few hundred. It was a small town. It was not well regarded.
• In fact, there is a story in the book of John that a man Philip finds Jesus and follows him and goes to tell his brother Nathanael and says “We have found him, of whom MOses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
• And the brother responds “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
• Okay, so Nazareth is like, I don’t know, I don’t want to offend anyone. It’s like Mississippi in the American context. Apologies to any of my listeners from Mississippi I’m sure it’s actually great. Just like Nazareth.
• But I don’t want you to think of Jesus entirely as a country bumpkin. 
• The only story we know from Jesus’s childhood comes from when he is twelve years old. His family travels to Jerusalem to worship at the temple. ANd on the return journey, his parents look around and discover to their horror that Jesus is not with the group.
• So in a frenzy they turn around and go back to the temple where they find him in the temple deep in discussion with the elders, who of course amazed by the boy’s precocious wisdom.
• And he responds “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”
• And this shows the connectedness of the Jewish world. And the education. Paul Johnson writes:
  
  • “We can be sure he was well instructed. Virtually all clever Jewish children were, if circumstances permitted, and Jesus came from a comfortable home. We know he could read, for his deep and, still more, his skeptical knowledge of the scriptures is evidence of constant study of the texts from an early age. By age twelve he was perfectly capable of taking part in a learned discussion of their meaning.”
• We basically miss Jesus’s young adulthood. We know nothing about it from the time he is twelve until he is 30 years old.
• Paul Johnson suggests he had no job and worked in agriculture. I think he just as easily could have followed his father’s trade and been a carpenter. In either case, judging by the types of stories he would eventually tell, he was a keen observer of the world around him. Who knows. We literally know nothing about it. No religious texts. No historical texts. Just a total black box.

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Early Years Ministry and John the Baptist (Inauguration)

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• The narrative now moves to John the Baptist.
• He is a preacher. He’s a part of this popular wave of people saying that Israel needs to get ready for the return of the messiah.
• Many think that he is the messiah.
• He’s very popular, and his big thing seems to be baptism.
• John did not invent baptism. In the Jewish context of the early first century, baptism would have been seen as a ritual washing. But John’s innovation seems to have been to tie it to the idea of repentance. So not just purifying yourself from contamination, but from your own sinfulness.
• Now John is the cousin of Jesus. So they have a preexisting family connection.
• The most famous story about John is when he baptizes Jesus. And according to all of the Biblical accounts, this is accompanied by a miraculous display of God’s approval of Jesus.
• And that is really where Jesus’s story begins.
• Then he goes off into the wilderness for forty days where he is tempted by the devil but he overcomes it. He is tempted with worldly power. The implication is that he could have become the messiah that everyone expected: The one who would throw off the shackles of Roman rule and bring forth an independent Israel. But instead he chooses the higher mission given to him by God. Which will become clear as the story goes on.
• Interestingly in this inauguration period there is no moment of him finding out about his calling. He alludes to it during the incident at the temple, I think the implication is that he somehow always knew his mission or else was taught it by his mother at a young age.
• So according to Matthew, the first thing Jesus does is the same thing as John the Baptist. Matthew: “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
  
  • Make a point about zeal. There is always someone who comes before you. And certainly Jesus would point to God as that primary example he was emulating, but in a strictly mortal sense, John is that person who he emulates and then surpasses.
• Now according to Matthew it is once John is thrown into prison that Jesus returns to Galilee and begins to preach. And according to Matthew the first thing he does is call disciples. Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
  
  • The timelines on the four gospels don’t actually match up exactly. Which again is the sort of thing that you would expect from first hand accounts of people who were not writing down things as they happened but writing down remembrances later.
  • But the general timeline is the same that he starts preaching, performing miracles, and calling disciples.
• When Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he means a specific thing by that. I think most people would have interpreted it as a return of independent Israel under divine guidance. Of course what Christians think he meant was a spiritual kingdom administered through his church.
  
  • So like the pharisees, Jesus is calling people to live a more obedient life in preparation for the coming of this kingdom of heaven. But unlike them his emphasis will be on adherence to the deeper meaning of the commandments, rather than strict obedience to the specific Mosaic rituals. Stuff like counting your steps on the sabbath day and rituals around eating and washing and all of that.
  • But most of that is yet to come, it seems that early on, Jesus’s message is simply repent. Do better.

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Miracles

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• According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus’s first miracles are healings. Matthew says he went around “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.” and also exorcisms.
• According to John the first miracle was turning water into wine. And this is widely regarded as his first miracle.
• So I’ll just read from the book of John, it describes the miracle:
• 2 And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to [a] marriage.
• 3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
• 4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
• 5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.
• 6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone
• 7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
• 8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
• 9 [And] the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

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• Now one of the most interesting things about Jesus is he likes to party. He likes to have dinner with his friends, he likes to eat and drink with his disciples and followers and everyone really. The Pharisees especially look askance at the company he keeps.
• Paul Johnson says about him: “He was a convivial and collegiate spirit, always seeking companions and new friends.”
  
  • He actually uses that word, convivial, many times. And I think it’s a good one. He was convivial.
• In fact, the Matthew takes time to make an apology for Jesus’s habit
  
  • 9: 14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?
  • His answer is that basically I’m here. The Messiah is here, it’s time to celebrate.
• And one of my favorite facts about the miracle of the water to wine is that the wine is really good. So as I was saying earlier, the governor of the feast tries the wine, and this is his response:
  
  • 9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the [groom],
  • 10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
• In other words, wow, usually people put out the good wine first, and then bring out the worse wine later, I guess they’re hoping you won’t notice because you’re a little tipsy at this point. But, the governor says, you saved the best wine for last. This is great wine. So Jesus doesn’t just turn water into wine. He turns it into really good wine! And obviously I find that pretty funny, but I also think it says something about Jesus. How much conviviality mattered to him.
• I also think it demonstrates part of why he was able to gain followers. Yes, the miracles. Yes his revolutionary teachings. But also the lifestyle that he offered. If you wanted to be crass you would say that Jesus and his disciples basically were unemployed bros who went around just hanging out, discussing interesting philosophy, and drinking.
• I don’t think they were alcoholics but I do think that the lifestyle Jesus put forward of radical freedom and a relaxed, convivial, environment was really attractive.
• If you want to start a movement like Jesus did. You look at startups, and businesses which are built around helping people do what they SHOULD do fail all the time. But businesses that offer people what they want to do succeed. Okay Weightwatchers has a marketcap of 65 million dollars. McDonalds has a market cap of 210 billion dollars. And I think the same thing is true of movements.
• A lot of the political movements and social movements today are all about things that you SHOULD do. I see this in politics. On the right wing a lot of the messaging to young men is you should step up. Get a job. Be responsible. Instead of offering something compelling in terms of an attractive way of life. Same thing on the left. A lot of talk about checking your privilege and trying to browbeat people into going along with your program through guilt. And look of course you also need to challenge your followers. Jesus did both as we shall see.
• But I think Jesus’s lifestyle of detached free-spirited living combined with conviviality and sociability created a very compelling social dynamic and I think that helps to explain some of his success.
• I also think one of the other reasons that Jesus was so focused on eating and drinking is that meals are a uniquely good setting for teaching.
  
  • Paul Johnson writes: “Jesus loved conviviality and he never condemned generous hospitality. Many of his most telling lessons were taught around crowded tables.”
  • Last year I went down and visited Bryan Johnson who you may have seen in the news recently, Mr Don’t Die. And to introduce his philosophy and his vision, he invited me and about 10 other people to a dinner at his house. And it was a very special experience. If you are trying to start a movement I think dinners are a uniquely powerful way to do that.
• Well, okay, back in the life of Jesus, it’s not just turning water into wine. He’s also healing. He’s about to give his first big sermon and lay out his doctrine. But I think it’s crucial that he does miracles first. 
• Sometimes you hear in storytelling the principle show don’t tell. And Jesus is going to tell people what he believes and what he’s all about but first he shows them by performing these miracles.

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The Sermon on the Mount

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• And then yes, he does tell people what he believes. He sets out his program. His moral framework at an event that has come to be known as the sermon on the mount. It’s the most famous sermon ever. You have almost certainly heard some of it. For example. Some of the most famous teachings are:
  
  • 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  • 4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
  • 5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
  • and
  • 14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
  • 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
  • 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
  • And
  • 27  Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
  • 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
  • and 
  • 38  Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
  • 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
  • And
  • 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
  • 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
  • And of course the Lord’s prayer where he teaches his disciples to pray:
  • 5 ¶ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
  • 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
  • 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
  • 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
  • 9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
  • 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
  • 11 Give us this day our daily bread.
  • 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
  • 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
• So many of these teachings might strike us as banal. But at the time they were utterly revolutionary. It was a complete inversion of the moral order.
• It is the ultimate inversion. The lowly and meek who love God are the good. Power, wealth, health, beauty, and strength are seen with inherent skepticism.
  
  • Or at least that is how the sermon on the mount has been popularly understood.
• He teaches a way of forgiveness, non-aggression, detachment, and love.
• And I love how the book of Matthew ends this account:
  
  • 28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine
  • 29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
  • And I think this is a major secret of Jesus’s success. He does quote the Torah from time to time. But he doesn’t rest his authority on scripture. If he had, there are always people who can second guess and contradict you. Rather, he unveiled the truth like Steve Jobs pulling the curtain off the Macintosh. Behold! Here it is!
  • The teachings contained their own justification. They were so beautiful and elegant that they needed no complex proofs. No multi-step historical reasoning. Just, here they are. Aren’t they great?

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Miracles (continued)

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• Well after his sermon on the mount, his miracles kick into overdrive.
• He cures a leper, he stills a storm, he casts out devils.
• He actually gets into trouble because in one instance, a man has a number of devils that are possessing him, and he casts them out into a herd of pigs, and the newly possessed pigs go running off a cliff into the sea, killing themselves, and the locals are not impressed by his power, but rather furious that he has killed their livestock and they chase him out of town.
• He heals paralytics, raises people from the dead, and causes the blind to see.
• All of this makes him a major celebrity, and everywhere he goes, he has throngs of people following him. Some hoping to be healed, many just wanting to hear the words of this new and exciting prophet.

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Disciples

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• This celebrity means that he has to steal away at times to either be alone or to be with his inner circle of disciples who would become known as the twelve apostles.
• Now I mentioned before that he offers a compelling way of life. But it’s not all giveaways. He’s also very demanding of his closest followers. He demands absolute devotion. And incredible sacrifice. So for example, in one instance, one man wants to follow him, but he says:
  
  • “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
  • Matt 8:22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.
• And this is another lesson that you see from many of the greats: Great leaders are demanding. Especially of their closest followers.
• So for example, when Jesus calls his inner circle, his twelve apostles, here is the commission he gives them:
  
  • 7 And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
  • 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
  • 9 Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses,
  • 10 Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves:
  • Okay, so in other words, you need to go preach with nothing. No money, no extra coat, no tent, nothing. And he warns them:
  • 16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
  • 17 But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;
  • 18 And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.
• So go teach people, do it totally impoverished. Take nothing with you. And by the way, you’re going to be persecuted and prosecuted as criminals for doing so. He is really pushing these people.
• In another passage of scripture, a man comes to him and asks 
• 16 ¶ “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
• 17 And he said unto him, if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
• 18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
• 19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
• 20 The young man saith (I’ve done all of this, he says:) All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
• 21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
• 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
• Okay, so Jesus has this demand that you must be willing to sacrifice everything to be my follower. I think this is most memorably expressed in the following passage:
  
  • “And there went great multitudes with Jesus: And he turned and said unto them: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
• I think that is one thing that is missing from those who try to portray Jesus as a peace-loving hippy. The radicalism. In another passage he says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
  
  • Again we are so used to this stuff that it might strike us as unremarkable. But imagine Caesar or Napoleon saying this. I am the way and the truth and the life.
    
    • I think actually my favorite depiction of this quote is not from a depiction of Jesus at all, but from the book Dune. The main character is a messiah figure who is reminiscent of both Jesus and Mohammed in different ways. But he is given the nickname Muadib, which means the one who points the way and in the climactic scene in the movie Dune 2 he shouts to the people “I’m pointing the way.” and it’s played as a moment of horror.
    • I obviously don’t see Jesus in such cynical terms but it would have been equally shocking to a person in 30 something AD listening to this message. I am the way. You must hate your father and mother and wife and children and follow me.

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Disputations

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• Well Jesus is getting big enough now that he begins to attract the attention (and disapproval) of the Pharisees. This is competitive jealousy more than anything.
  
  • They are both concerned about his unorthodox teaching and threatened by his popularity.
  • It’s interesting that there are relatively few examples of him arguing with the Sadducees, at least until his trial at the end of his life (spoiler alert) but he argues with those who might be able to be convinced.
  • And the Jesus movement has to go somewhat underground for a bit.
    
    • 14 ¶ Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.
    • 15 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence: and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all;
    • 16 And charged them that they should not make him known:
  • I find it interesting that the new testament is filled with Jesus requesting people keep secret the things that they have seen and heard. And I think that is another lesson for those trying to start a movement. Certain things, your most radical teachings, you need to keep secret, at least until the appropriate time.

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Parables

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• I don’t know whether it’s connected or not, but from this time period on is when Jesus begins to teach even more in a style for which he was well known: Parables.
  
  • A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.
  • So for example, probably his two most famous parables are the prodigal son and the good samaritan.
  • The good samaritan is given in response to a line of inquiries, a lawyer, presumably a Pharisee, asks Jesus what he shall do to have eternal life. And Jesus answers him saying “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and they neighbor as thyself.
  • And so the lawyer asks him well who is my neighbor?
  • And in response Jesus tells him a story, which we now know as the parable of the good samaritan.
    
    • So a certain man is traveling on a road when he is attacked by thieves who strip him of his goods, his clothes, then they wound him, and leave him for dead.
    • And a priest passes by him on the road, and then another priest. And both of them pass by the other side of the road.
    • But then a Samaritan passes by. And Samaritans were old ethnic enemies of the Jews. Or at least ethnic rivals. They were looked down on by well-bred Jews, they were considered half-breeds. There was a lot of bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans.
    • But this Samaritan takes compassion on the man. And here is what he does. Reading now from Luke 10:
      
      • 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
      • 34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
      • 35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
      • 36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
      • 37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
• Alright and then one of my other favorite parables is the prodigal son. So the Pharisees ask why he associates with the people he does. Specifically he often dines with known sinners, and with publicans. Publicans were Roman tax collectors. Rome actually didn’t have a public tax collection apparatus for their provinces so they would essentially bid out the service to a wealthy senator. And at first this is a very profitable affair but quickly the price to administer one of these provinces skyrockets. And what that means is that many senators take a loss on the contract. And if you’re not going to take a loss, you had better squeeze this province for everything they have got. So these private tax collectors were called publicani, publicans. And they were hated because they really had this pressure to bleed you dry in places like Judea in order to make back the money that they had spent to get this contract.
• Okay and Jesus has no qualms about associating with publicani. It should be noted that most of the rank and file publicani, these are just employees, these aren’t the people making the rules, they didn’t buy this contract at exorbitant prices. They’re just contractors who are trying to make a living. But they are totally hated in the provinces.
• And also it strikes me that he is dining with people who are hated in sort of opposite directions. The sinners because they are low. These are people of ill-repute. Usually poor. The detritus of society. And the publicans because they are high. Because they oppress. Because they refuse to acknowledge their privilege. They are RAYCISS.
• So in modern terms basically he’s dining with the worst stereotype of both sides. With the inner city welfare queens and the MAGA racists.
• And so, reading now from Luke 15 “the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, this man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”
• And in response he gives a few parables to explain why he goes out of his way to teach and associate with these segments of society. And the final parable is now known as the parable of the prodigal son. 
• A certain wealthy man has two sons. And the younger son asks for his portion of the inheritance. So the dad gives it to him.
• And he goes into a foreign country and wastes the money on riotous living. Presumably sex drugs and rock and roll.
• But there is a famine in this foreign land and the son runs out of money. And he ends up with a job feeding pigs and he doesn’t even have enough money to eat.
• And so he says to himself:
• “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.
• 20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
• 21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
• 22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
• 23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
• 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
• 25 Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing.
• 26 And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant.
• 27 And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound.
• 28 And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him.
• 29 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
• 30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.
• 31 And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.
• 32 It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

• One of these things that great communicators are good at is making comparisons. Parable is just one of the most effective teaching devices there is. Period. And Jesus was a master of it.
  
  • Paul Johnson has a good quote about this:
  • There are not half a dozen lines of his teaching without an image, and often an unforgettable one, which has entered into the repertoire of writers all over the world. Inanimate objects spring to life, animals are anthropomorphized, nature teems with purposeful moral activity, and human beings often assume a dignity, a profundity, or a pathos, thanks to the brilliant glitter of Jesus’s imagery. We hear of “living water” (Jn 4 : 10) and “the blind lead[ing] the blind” (Lk 6 : 39). Jesus wishes to gather the children of Jerusalem together “as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings” (Lk 13 : 34). There is a wonderful image of the simple farmer who should sow “night and day” and “the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how” (Mk 4:27). Jesus loves single trees, standing in isolation, the olive, the fig, the vine, and uses them tenderly. He speaks of the late summer and the whitening harvests. He loves roots, branches, and leaves, and sees images of people in all of them.
• You know in response to the question why do you eat with publicans and sinners he could have just said because they are the ones who need it. But these parables illustrate the point so much powerfully. The lessons that he is teaching become iconic and memorable through his creative use of parables. And I think that parables help stimulate others to think for themselves as well. Instead of just hearing and accepting or rejecting a teaching, they turn it over in their mind and really think about it and its implications.

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John The Baptist Dies (Retirement)

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• John the Baptist has been imprisoned for basically the entirety of Jesus’s ministry. But now the king of Judea, Herod, executes him. He’s beheaded. There is a whole story there, he is convinced to do it by a dancing girl, his stepdaughter.
• Anyway, this is a huge blow for Jesus, who is obviously grief-stricken. And goes out into a desert place to be alone. But the crowd finds out where he is, and they follow him out into the wilderness.
• Of course, the problem is, how do you feed so many people? You’re away from the towns and cities where food could be bought. 
• So after Jesus has healed the sick who have come to see him, he takes what little food they have, five loaves of bread and two fishes, and he blesses it, puts it into baskets and tells his disciples to go feed it to the people.
• Miraculously, the loaves and fishes keep replenishing. And five thousand people are fed.
• It is after this incident that Jesus walks on water in the midst of a storm, and causes Peter to walk on water for a brief period as well.
• And then he performs the same feeding miracle again, except this time he feeds four thousand people with seven loaves and a few fishes.

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Final Preaching in Jerusalem

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• This marks the beginning of Jesus’s preparation for the end.
• He now begins to speak more openly to his disciples of who he is.
• He asks them who people say he is. And then he asks them who they think he is, And his foremost disciple, his sort of #2, Simon Peter answers “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
• Jesus in these last days tends to spend more time teaching his disciples rather than large crowds. It’s as if he’s trying to prepare them to be able to carry on the work in his absence, knowing that he will soon die.
• Along with his followers, Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem. And he is received at first with rapturous acclaim.
• It is a triumphant entry into Jerusalem. People spread their garments before him so that his mule doesn’t have to tread on the ground, and they put palm fronds on the path before him.
• Even so, most of these don’t think of him as the messiah. When they are asked who this man is, his supporters respond “Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.”
• So he’s popular with the people. One of the first things he does once he enters Jerusalem is go to the temple. The temple was the center of Jewish worship. It was really the center of their world. It’s hard to overemphasize how important the temple was.
• But it was more than that. It was also a symbol of the entire Herodian regime and the Sadducees who supported him.
  
  • NT Wright writes: The Temple became, de facto, the cultic shrine organized by those who had made a somewhat unsteady peace with Rome.
  • So here is what Jesus does:
  • So Jesus goes to the temple and this is what he does:
  • [he] began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
  • 16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
  • 17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.
  • 18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.
• So from this point on, both the pharisees and the sadducees are now going into overdrive thinking about how they can get rid of Jesus.
  
  • Now they can’t do this themselves, both because Jesus is still popular with the people, and because they don’t have the legal authority to execute someone. They are under Roman rule. They can only turn people over to the authorities.
  • So they start looking for pretexts upon which they can recommend charges to the Romans.
  • At first, Jesus cleverly avoids these.
• In the most famous example, the chief priests asks Jesus whether it is lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not.
• This is quite the conundrum because if he says no, he can be turned over to the Romans because he is urging people not to pay their taxes.
• But if he says yes, he is undermining his radical message. He’s exposing himself as a toady of the Roman regime. And that would make him very unpopular with the people.
  
  • So he answers very cleverly. He asks them to pull out a coin.
  • And then he asks them “Whose is the image and the superscription” on the coin?
  • And they say “Caesar’s.”
  • And he says to them “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.
• But these clever responses cannot put off his enemies for long.

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The Passion

• The chief priests and the scribes and the elders and the high priests. Basically anyone who can be described as a religious authority in any way shape or form, people who are normally rivals and hate each other, begin getting together and conspiring to remove Jesus. With such powerful enemies, it is only a matter of time for Jesus.
• One of the last things Jesus does is, appropriately, have a feast with his closest followers.
• This is the passover, the greatest celebration of the Jewish calendar.
• So Jesus has a passover feast with his apostles.
• He predicts that one of them will betray him. And they all ask “Is it I?” and Jesus indicates that it is Judas, who had already been conspiring with authorities to turn Jesus in.
  
  • So Judas leaves the feast.
• And then Jesus administers a special meal. The last supper.
• He blesses the bread and wine and tells his apostles to eat it in remembrance of his body and blood, which will soon be sacrificed.
  
  • Christians all over the world reenact this last supper in a ceremony that is called the eucharist or holy communion, or the blessed sacrament of the lord’s supper.
• It’s now night time, and Jesus leaves the building where they are having this last supper, and goes to an orchard of olive trees to pray. He takes with him Peter James and John, three of his closest apostles. He tells them “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.”
• He is in agony, apparently over the sacrifice that he will soon be asked to make. He falls on his face and prays “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
• Peter James and John fall asleep as he prays, and he has to wake them multiple times.
• He asks them one of the most stinging questions of all time “Could ye not watch with me one hour?”
• And finally the last time that they fall asleep he says “Sleep now now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”
• At that moment, Judas comes with up the hill with a crowd of chief priests, elders, and ruffians carrying swords and staves.
• His disciples first try to defend him, and Peter takes out a sword that he had been carrying and cuts off a man’s ear.
• According to the book of John, he is first taken to an elder named Annas, who then refers him to the chief priest, Caiphas.
• The trial is a sham and a miscarriage of justice from the very beginning.
• The prosecutors are apparently unprepared, and have trouble coming up with witnesses, though they eventually come up with two who are willing to testify that Jesus said he would destroy the temple. And Jesus had indeed prophesied that the temple would be destroyed.
• Jesus maintains silent dignity in the face of this circus. Only answering the final question. When Caiphas says:
  
  • Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?
  • 63 But Jesus held his peace, And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.
  • 64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
  • 65 Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.
  • 66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.
• They rough him up. Try to humiliate him by striking him from behind and then asking “Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is it that smote thee?”
• As this is going on, Peter is listening in to the trial from a waiting room. And people recognize his Galilean accent and say hey, aren’t you one of his disciples? But famously Peter denies knowing Christ three times. Jesus had prophesied this would happen, and when Peter realizes what he has done, he goes out and weeps bitterly.
• The council of high priests then bind Jesus and take him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region.
• Pilate is really reluctant to get involved in a Jewish religious squabble. And so he asks him the most relevant question: Are you trying to lead a rebellion. He says quote “Art thou the King of the Jews?”
• And Jesus answers “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”
• I’m condensing here obviously. But this is the key question to Pilate. Are you trying to start a rebellion? Are you really trying to overthrow Roman rule like these chief priests are saying?
• And Jesus says what he wants to hear, my kingdom is not of this earth. And even gives him evidence, look, my followers are not here armed trying to stop me from being arrested.
• And this is good enough for Pilate who declares “I find in him no fault at all.”
• The mob outside his palace is not happy with this. So Pilate tries to pass the buck and sends him to Herod, who is the king in the area. Herod questions him, but Jesus refuses to answer his questions. So Herod sends him back to Pilate.
• So you’ve got the chief priests, the Roman governor, and the Jewish King and they are all trying to pass off responsibility and avoid being the one to pass the sentence on Jesus.
• Okay so this is a kangaroo court. The court of the chief priests basically tries him for blasphemy, but that is not a charge that holds any sway with the Romans. And so they deliver him to the Romans under the charge of sedition. Of plotting against the government.
• And that charge is clearly spurious. 
• So Pilate really doesn’t want to convict him. But he also doesn’t want to be at odds with the chief priests. I mean think about this guy’s position. He’s a foreigner, he’s just trying to keep the peace. And so he wants to be on good terms with the local religious leaders.
• So he devises what he thinks is a clever solution.
• There is a robber, a man named Barabbas, presumably a notorious criminal. And there is a tradition that one prisoner will be released on passover. So there is a crow outside of his palace awaiting the verdict of this trial. And he goes out to them and says I find no fault in this man, who do you want me to release, the innocent Jesus, or the obviously criminal Barabbas?
• But what he hasn’t counted on is that this is a picked crowd of supporters of the chief priests.
• And so they cry out “Barabbas!”
• And so Pilate ceremonially washes his hands to try to clear himself of any guilt in this execution. But ultimately he does free Barabbas and hand Jesus to his soldiers to be killed.
• So this has been a miscarriage of from start to finish. He is apprehended under one charge, tried under another, is found innocent, and is still executed.
• He is first scourged, which is to be severely whipped. Then he is humiliated. He is given mock regal regalia: a crown of thorns, a scarlet robe, and a reed to hold as his scepter.
• He is then taken to a hill called Golgotha where he is crucified.
  
  • In The New Testament In Its World, NT Wright writes:
  • “Crucifixion was a brutal and barbaric form of execution. If you had ever seen a crucifixion (and they were common in places like Judea and Galilee), the experience would have been terrifying. It would leave you with irrepressible memories of naked half-dead men dying a protracted death for days on end, covered in blood and flies, their flesh gnawed at by rats, their members ripped at by wild dogs, their faces pecked by crows, the victims mocked and jeered by sadistic torturers and other bystanders, while relatives nearby, weeping uncontrollably, would be helpless to do anything for them.”
  • Crucifixion was a powerful symbol throughout the Roman world. It was not just a means of liquidating undesirables; it did so with maximum degradation and humiliation. It said, loud and clear: we are in charge here; you are our property; we can do what we like with you. It insisted, coldly and brutally, on the absolute sovereignty of Rome, and of Caesar. It told an implicit story, of the uselessness of rebel recalcitrance and the ruthlessness of imperial power. It said in particular: this is what happens to rebel leaders. Crucifixion was a symbolic act with a clear and frightening meaning. 
• Okay, so crucifixion really rubs your nose in your own powerlessness. Not only are we going to execute this person, but we are going to do it publicly so that you have to think about how powerless you are to stop us.
• The physical process is that a person has their hands and feet nailed to a wooden structure, which is then raised to display the dying criminal.
• The actual cause of death varied. Some would die from loss of blood, but more often they died from exposure, starvation, and suffocation. Once the person is no longer able to support their weight on the nails in their feet, they have to hang awkwardly in a position that doesn’t allow their lungs to expand and they are no longer able to breathe properly. It’s not a good way to go.
• Once he is is put up on the cross, Jesus famously says seven things.
• First: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
• Then he is actually next to two criminals who were crucified on the same day, one of whom derides Jesus, but the other comes to his defense. And Jesus says to the latter criminal: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
• Then Jesus says to his mother who is there watching him die “Woman, behold your son.” as he points to John. Thereby giving John the responsibility to watch over his family after he is dead.
• He then despairs, and cries out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
• Subsequently, the effects of the torture and execution begin to kick in.
• Jesus then says “I thirst,” after which he is given a disgusting mixture of vinegar and gall, which he rejects.
• His final two sayings are “It is finished,” and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
• The Romans don’t want to offend Jewish sensibilities by leaving the bodies up on the sabbath day. So for the two criminals next to Jesus, they break their legs to speed up their deaths. But when they come to Jesus, he is already dead, presumably because he was tortured more than the other criminals prior to his crucifixion.
• The soldiers pierce his side with a spear to be sure that Jesus is dead.
• Two wealthy followers of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, then take his body and dress it and give him a proper burial in a well appointed tomb.

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Resurrection

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• Now obviously any single point in the life of Jesus can be challenged. Any of you who don’t believe in Jesus are obviously not going to believe in any of the miracles discussed. But the preceding account still probably forms a pretty coherent narrative of what Jesus’s life was like.
• But this is the part where the believers have to part with the non-believers.
• Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, not his mother, but a third Mary, come to the tomb, and find the stone that guarded the entrance rolled away. And they run into an angel who tells them “Fear not: For I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”
• That is from Matthew. According to Luke the angel says “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” According to John, it is Mary who first encounters Jesus. But many of the disciples speak with him, and even eat and socialize with him.
• According to Matthew, Jesus ended his work on the earth with these words:
  
  • 18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
  • 19 ¶ Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
  • 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
• According to Luke Jesus actually ascends up into heaven as his final act
  
  • 51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.

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Okay so there you have it, the life of Jesus, the most influential man of all time.

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I’ll finish with a quick summary. I have tried throughout this to demonstrate the Jesus according to the gospels. For the non-believers I think it is also helpful to give the summary of the historical Jesus. We don’t know much, but we don’t know nothing. Here is what NT Wright says:

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• It is quite easy to lay out a brief list of things that few will deny about Jesus’ life and public activity. He was most likely born in what we now call 4 BC (the calculation of the BC–AD divide took place in the sixth century, based on limited information). He grew up in Galilee, in the town of Nazareth, close to the major city of Sepphoris. He spoke Aramaic, at least some Hebrew, and probably some Greek as well. He emerged as a public figure in around AD 28, in the context of the initially similar work of John the Baptist. He summoned people to repent (in other words, to turn back from the ways they were going), and announced the kingdom, or reign, of Israel’s God, using parables in particular to do so. He journeyed around the villages of Galilee, announcing his message and enacting it by effecting remarkable cures, including exorcisms, and by sharing in table-fellowship with a socio-culturally wide group. He called a group of close disciples, among whom twelve were given special status. His activities, especially one dramatic action in the Temple, incurred the wrath of some elements in the Jewish world, notably (at least towards the end) of the high-priestly establishment. Partly as a result of this, he was handed over to the Romans and executed in the manner regularly used for insurrectionists. His followers claimed, soon afterwards, that he had been raised from the dead. They carried on his work in a new way, and some of them were persecuted for doing so, both by Jews and by pagans.

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If you are a premium subscriber, I am going to get into all of my takeaways here shortly, as well as a bunch of my endnotes.

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But I do want to end with one last takeaway. Which is that Jesus’s willingness to die for his message was obviously a huge key to its success.

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And a huge key to the success of the early Christian church. Almost all of the apostles followed Jesus’s example and were killed for their beliefs. Many of the rank and file were persecuted and killed as well.

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And this willingness to die for their beliefs is a big part of what created ever more converts. That is why the Pope wears red shoes. It represents that they have been dipped in the blood of the martyrs.

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This is why Paul, one of the most important early apostles, becomes a Christian. I mean, yes, he has an experience where he sees Jesus and that is obviously the key thing, but I think it is relevant that he only has that vision after witnessing the death of Stephen, an early Christian, who blesses and forgives his executioners shortly before being stoned to death. I think that is what Paul in the emotional space to have a vision.

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So in many ways that is the most important lesson of Jesus for those willing to start a movement. You can’t fake it. If you want to create something truly world-changing, then you have to be willing to die for it, and you need to be willing to ask others to do the same.

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We’ll cut it off here, thanks for listening. For more takeaways and legacy, and further context and my thoughts, subscribe at takeoverpod.supercast.com. This helps the show keep going. Thank you to all of you who help me do this by being premium subscribers. And a reminder that if you are broke or a student then email me at Ben@takeoverpod.com and I’ll hook you up with a free subscription.

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Thank you to Speechify. Again I used it a ton for the research for this episode. You will be shocked at how quickly you can read and how much you retain when you read and listen at the same time. Speechify is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to be a great learner. Go to speechify.com/ben for 15% off Speechify Premium.

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Legacy & Takeaways

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Five Lessons

• Make real demands of your disciples
• Can’t just be personal, you must create a movement. Man is a political animal.
• Friendship and the power of close disciples
• Teach with stories, metaphors, parables.
• Introduce a new way of life - give your disciples something
• Strong belief to the point that you’re willing to die for something - absolute belief - plenty of chances for Jesus to not die
• Show, don’t tell. His healings, miracles, and his example were more important than his teachings. That’s why the gospel of Thomas is still not that important.

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