Synoptic Gospels 266-267

All right, we are finishing up Parable of the

Pounds, Loop 19. We will be using the synopsis this morning.

So if someone wants to grab them, because we're sort of going to hit a transition point here.

We start moving into the triumphal entries. So I read that. You all can skip them.

It's OK with me. You know, no skin off my nose, one way or the other.

I will just stop giving references and say on page such and such. And then you all can just sit there and go, hey, if I don't have the synopsis,

I don't know where he's going to be going. And you would be exactly right.

Yeah, really, where'd Brick go? Oh, there he is.

OK. You frightened him to go get a synopsis. I guess. I cracked the whip, and everybody responded.

That's good. That's good. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we're not taking any prisoners today. All right. Last time we were together, we looked at the parable of the pounds.

Number 266, sort of ran out of time there, didn't really make a whole lot of application.

But I think we pretty much went through what we needed to go through on that. Now, 267, compare 114.

I've got to check these to make sure we are actually looking at an actual parallel here.

The woman with the ointment. I don't remember if we did that.

Did this or not. You'll notice what we have here. For those of you who are visiting, we have been going through a synoptic study, a study of pretty much

Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We've been throwing John in for the fun of it, just been going through all the Gospels.

But using this synopsis of the Gospels, and we've been at it for seven and a half years, something like that.

We are known at PRBC as the pretty rushing Baptist church. We just right on through stuff.

We've been in Romans now for how many months, and we're at verse 19. So let's just say we go through Bible studies as fast as we sing songs.

I have often said that we need one of those metronomes, those little things where you can set the pace.

Because I try to get those hymns, but there's somebody in the back that just, someday

I'm going to sit there with a stopwatch, and we're going to do the first verse, and then we're going to do the last verse.

I guarantee you, the last verse will be 20 % slower than the first one. It's just like, oh, man, you know.

And it was Brother Melvin the Twyre. How long has it been since Brother Melvin was here?

You probably know to a moment, to a minute, Roxy. But has it been a decade?

No, it's been over a decade. But Brother Melvin had a lot of wonderful sayings.

But one of his favorite sayings, he was a black fellow, and so he would sing out. And he would sing out the amens.

And he said to us once, he said, Brethren, I do believe that the hymns should end with an amen.

They shouldn't die with an amen. And he was exactly right about that.

So he encouraged us to sing that out. And so anyway, but believe it or not,

I have been to churches that sang hymns more slowly than we do. I was in an

OPC church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And well, yeah, it was a church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Sure, there's some Amish around there. But it was an OPC church. And I'm going to tell you something. I don't know if the organist just was too old to be playing the organ, or just what it was.

But oh my goodness, we sound like a bunch of crazed Pentecostals in comparison to that church.

It was just like, oh, come, oh, come ye.

Can't breathe. Can't hold my breath that long. What's going on here? This is amazing. But anyway, how did

I get out of that? What did that have to do with what this was about? I have no idea. Oh, the speed by which we were going.

The pretty, rushing Baptist church, yes. So anyway, even if we did do this parallel back in section 114, that would have been approximately in 2005.

So I don't know that anyone really is going to remember much of what I said back there, unless you go back and listen to the archives or something.

So I'm not sure that we did. And I'm not sure that I would necessarily.

You'll notice, this is interesting. And we can at least use it to remind ourselves of something.

We're going to need to be doing a little bit of review here over the next few weeks anyways. The reason for that is, as I have mentioned, and as you may have noticed,

I'm somewhat apprehensive and nervous about the next portion of our study, because it is going to require a tremendous amount of preparation time on my part, because we're getting into some of the most difficult of the synoptic problems, because they have to do with events in the

Passion Week, as it is traditionally called, leading up to the crucifixion. And then especially after the crucifixion, the resurrection narratives.

At that point, you're only dealing with Mark falls out, basically. And you have

Matthew, Luke, and John. And putting them together is a challenge. And so it's going to take a lot of work.

But we're going to need to do some reviewing of some of the stuff that we covered right at the start. And since it's been seven and a half, moving toward eight years, maybe a couple of you might need a little review.

I mean, most of you probably could repeat everything that I said by way of introduction after seven some odd years.

But probably not. Anyway, we need to review some of those things, because as soon as we turn the page, in fact, and look at section 269, the triumphal entry, immediately we're into one of the first of those big questions.

Specifically, why does Matthew record things the way he does in regards to the citation from the

Old Testament text, and all sorts of stuff. So we might even start that review today, depending on whether we get through this.

But we can learn something if you look just at section 267.

If you have the synoptic. If you don't, hopefully you're sitting near somebody who does.

We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John put in parallel with one another.

And this is the anointing at Bethany. But what you notice is

Matthew, Mark, and John have what is probably the same event.

And they have it, as John puts it, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom

Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made a supper. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Mary took a pound of caustic ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

And the house was filled with fragrance of the ointment. Now, Matthew, Mark, and John place this in the same time period in regards to Jesus' ministry.

And so on and so forth. Notice that Matthew and Mark say, while he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper.

So we have more information provided there. Was Simon healed by Jesus?

There's all sorts of things we can ask about that. The Luke passage just doesn't fit.

Notice it's in Luke 7. And by now, hopefully, after all these years, in your mind you're starting to get, just by exposure, as long as you don't fall asleep within the first five minutes of the class, you're starting to hopefully have in your mind somewhat of a outline of each of the

Gospels so that if you needed to, if you said, you know, there's a story in Jesus' life and it was sometime toward the end.

And so in Mark that would be, or in Luke that would be, or in Matthew that would be around these chapters.

I mean, most of us could probably do that with John. You know, we know John chapter 12 is the end of Jesus' public ministry.

John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 is the private ministry to his disciples right at the beginning of, right before the crucifixion, leading right up to the time of the betrayal in John chapter 18.

Hopefully, we have that in our minds so we sort of know where things are.

But Luke has a similar story, but it does not seem to be the same story.

But that's what synoptics do. They sort of throw these things in you. That's why I sort of wonder if we looked at this and said, we'll hold that off, or we'd only looked at Luke's version of this similar situation.

I don't know. But it seems rather clear to me that Luke is a different story, a different time frame.

Notice it says, the woman of the city who was a sinner. And this actually,

I believe, is where the connection ends up being made to Mary Magdalene, allegedly having been a prostitute or something along those lines.

It's amazing the connections that sometimes get put together. But I think it would be best, in light of the major differences, to leave

Luke to the earlier period and then look at Matthew, Mark, and John as recording for us one incident, and that is

Mary and the anointing of Jesus.

It was interesting. I will mention this. It just struck me. I had forgotten about this. But I forget what program

I was on. I think it was a program back east, if I recall correctly.

I don't remember now. But I was talking about Islam, and this guy called in. He said, well, how did he put it?

He somehow came up with a proof. Oh, that's right. Here's his proof that the

Koran is not from God. I've come up with a lot of arguments on that point myself, but this one,

I had never heard of before. He took Mark 14 .9

and Matthew 26 .13. Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

So Jesus makes this promise at the end of Mark.

Mark 14 .9. And therefore, since the story of the anointing is found in all four gospels, but not in the

Koran, therefore the Koran cannot be from God, because it does not fulfill that argument. So if there are any

Muslims present, you may now repent. We will have an altar call after the service.

Anyone see a little bit of a problem with that? I didn't buy it, personally. I think it's good to be somewhat discerning about the arguments he used.

And just because, well, it's negative Islam, it must be true, it's not really the best way to think, unfortunately.

I meet a lot of people who think that way about whatever their favorite group they don't like is. Well, it's against Mormonism, so it must be true, or something like that.

Don't go that direction. The obvious problem is, I don't think Luke is talking about the same situation.

So there's a problem. If he does not record the same thing, then Luke would not be able to be from God, either.

Obviously, Jesus' promise wasn't that every single book, I mean, you could apply this to Acts.

You could apply this to Paul's Epistle to Romans. I mean, there's all sorts of things you could do.

Jesus' promise was that this act, on her part, was going to be commemorated in the preaching of the

Gospel. Now, it is interesting. How would Jesus know that if Jesus does not know what the content of the inscripturated revelation is going to be?

That is an interesting issue to raise. But the point is, it's a promise that this is going to be commemorated of her, not that every single book from God is going to re -narrate the story over and over and over again.

I think there are significantly better arguments that could be made. But anyway, so leaving Luke out, especially since we had dealt with it at an earlier point, one might ask why

Matthew and Mark do not provide the names. You know, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I don't know that we can answer that question with certainty, but one thing that has often crossed my mind is we simply do not know the context in which each of the writers was working.

And whether they knew or did not know the names, given the form of the tradition that had come down to them at their particular point in history.

Or if, even more than that, they did know the names, knew what that person's situation was, and chose specifically not to use their names for good and sufficient reasons at that time.

We all, I think, could understand, well,

I'm right now in negotiations talking with a

Muslim scholar about co -authoring a book with me. And it would be a really, really, really important book.

But I'm not running around telling everybody who it is, because I don't want to prejudice that process.

And someone hears this, and they go running off and tell such and such a person. I mean, there's some people who know, and there's some people who could guess, and there's some people who might think they know and would guess wrong, and so on and so forth.

But as I've been discussing this in various venues, I haven't just been going,

I've been talking to X, Y, or Z. I've mentioned it to a few people just to get their feelings about this person's perspectives, and so on and so forth.

So I have reasons why a year from now, I can guarantee you,

I could tell you who I was talking to, whether he does or does not do it.

Or if he doesn't and somebody else does it, then it wouldn't be an issue to say why I first talked to so and so. But right now, there's good and sufficient reasons.

Well, especially if John is written much later, in regards to John being the youngest of the disciples, and historically, most

Christians have believed that John comes at a later point. Then there would probably be less reason not to include names.

If Mary and Martha are still alive at the time of the writing of Matthew and Mark, and especially as persecution has become more severe at this point in time, there just may be really good reasons not to mention certain people's names, because they're still around.

And so you use more of a generic description. We are told that, and John mentions where Lazarus was, because this is

John 12, and John 11 is the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus is at table, but they are at the house of Simon the leper, which again leads us to the rather logical conclusion that he probably still isn't a leper anymore.

Because he wouldn't be having people into his house for dinner, if that were the case.

So probably healed by Jesus. And we have this event that takes place.

A pound of costly ointment of pure nard, it was in an alabaster flask.

You know, we think of things that are extremely expensive today and are very costly today, and even the word nard would, in and of itself, make sure it would not be expensive today.

But whatever the terminology one might use, this would be something that would, for example, possibly be part of a woman's dowry.

It was rare, and to say that it was odiferous would be, to use a large word, that is not nearly strong enough.

There are times, I do a lot of traveling, and there are times

I'm standing in the security line or something. And all of a sudden, your eyes start watering, and your sinuses start closing up, and you realize it's the person in front of you, because they bathed in some kind of aftershave or perfume or something.

And you're just wondering how their clothes don't just melt right off of them, because it's just, oh my goodness.

And they're just, and everybody else is like, ah! And you just wonder, how does this person not know?

Do they only have one olfactory nerve left after all these years? Wow. And you just go, man,

I hope I'm not on the plane with that person, because, oh, it doesn't matter if they're in the tail section and I'm in first class.

I'm going to be doomed. There are just people that are like that. This is stuff that would definitely curl your hair.

Anyway, what you have is an anointing of Jesus. Now, there is a difference between Matthew and Mark and John here, in that there is discussion in Matthew and Mark of the anointing of Jesus' head.

There is only a mention of the anointing of Jesus' feet in John. And given how people sat at the table in those days, they didn't sit.

They reclined at the table. So the feet would be away from the table, which is not a bad idea.

I still don't know how people did. I think there were all sorts of digestive problems that were caused by this mechanism of eating.

I mean, I guess there are some teenagers that can do this, but I could not pull that off for love and money.

That would not work at all. I suppose it might be helpful in not eating as much.

I don't know. But there is a difference in the telling as to location.

The response is interesting in both situations. Judas Iscariot, in particular, is pointed out in John as being the one who says, why was this anointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

That gives you an idea of just how expensive. I mean, I don't know what the average income today is.

In the United States, let's just take a round number and say $40 ,000 or something like that for somebody on a low end.

This would be about a year's worth. That would be about how expensive this is. I mean, you're talking really rare, really only to be used in the most extreme circumstances.

And the response from the disciples. Now, notice Mark says, there were some who said to themselves indignantly.

Matthew has, but when the disciples saw it, they were indignant. And John tells us that Judas Iscariot specifically said.

Now, again, if these are all interdependent upon one another, now you can start playing mind games to try to figure out, well, if Mark came first, then why did

Matthew say this of the disciples? In fact, this causes, in my mind, a little bit of a contradiction to the

Markan priority thesis. You may recall from seven and a half years ago the fact that a large portion of New Testament scholars today assume

Mark is first and that Matthew has Mark. Well, if that were the case, it seems a little bit odd that Mark has the rather general statement, there were some who said to themselves indignantly.

General statement, just there were some. They said it themselves. But then

Matthew makes it specific. The general theory amongst forum critics and people who try to take the text apart and go, well,

I think it went through this stage, and then they did this to it, and then they redacted this, and blah, blah, blah, is that the later writers would be trying to make the disciples look better.

The later writers would be concerned with Mark's honesty and forthrightness, and they would try to smooth things out.

But that doesn't even work here, because Mark just simply says, there were some who said it themselves indignantly.

And Matthew says, when the disciples saw it. So it seems like Matthew is actually introducing a difficulty for his own group.

Why would Matthew record that his own people, of whom he was one, were indignant, did not understand what was going on, and in fact, he's also going to record for us that truly,

I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. So once again, the disciples are sort of shown on the outside of doing what would be appropriate or right.

But if we see these as independent retellings of the story, then it really makes sense.

For example, neither of the other two gospels mention

Judas's exact words, but John does. Might John have been closest to Judas and hence heard him while others did not?

Maybe Matthew's on the other end of the table. I mean, 12 people around one table. You well know, if you recall

Thanksgiving dinner or you go out with a group, frequently when

I travel, we'll go out after I speak, and a number of people from the church will want to go out.

And you know the look on the face of the poor waitress lady at the restaurant when 12 or 15 of us walk in.

It's just like, oh, great. And they sock you with the big, huge tip thing at the end and so on and so forth.

But if I end up on one end of the table, I may not even know what the conversation is about on the far end of the table.

I can hear them talking, but I very rarely know what they're talking about or can participate in it or anything like that.

And so you've got the 12 disciples. You've got Simon. You've got

Lazarus. You've got at least 14. It's a big table. And therefore, is it possible?

I'm just looking at this and going, how does John know about this? Well, maybe

John was close to Judas and heard him say it. Maybe Judas didn't say it so loud that everybody caught it.

And so the tradition that's passed down to Matthew doesn't mention Judas's comments, because Matthew didn't hear it.

Matthew's on the other end of the table. But it seems to make more sense to me than trying to climb into people's minds and going, well,

Matthew's sitting there with Mark, but he doesn't like simply saying there were some who said it themselves indignantly.

So he wants to point the finger more at himself. OK, if that's where you want to go.

But it seems to me that there's some other options that, unfortunately, in most situations don't get discussed.

They don't get discussed. In the vast majority of seminaries and Bible colleges today, not all, but in the vast majority, the idea of harmonization or even allowing for this kind of discussion, it's just not there.

That's not how you get published. That's not the cutting edge of theology.

And so you don't discuss it. So the discussion, it is interesting, both

Mark and John record the same number, 300 denarii.

And then, of course, you always have the obligatory end given to the poor. So since these are

Judas Iscariot's words, it is interesting Mark has them exactly.

And Matthew has a different way of putting it.

Both Matthew and Mark, it's interesting to talk about the oil being wasted.

So part of the point of this story is that the disciples still, at the beginning, right before the triumphal entry, as Jesus is moving toward Jerusalem, and we've gone through Matthew 16.

We've gone as necessary to go to Jerusalem. And what's going to happen? They ain't tracking with it.

There is just too much of a fundamental conflict between what they think the Messiah is to be and what

Jesus is telling them the Messiah is going to be first, suffering servant before conquering king.

They're not tracking with it. And therefore, they don't see the significance of what

Mary's doing. Now, how much did Mary understand? I don't know. But Jesus's understanding is laid out.

For example, Mark 14 .6, Jesus said, let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them. But you will not always have me.

She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burying. So here is the anointment of Jesus's body for burying, which was a common part of Jewish life.

Did Mary understand that's what she was doing? I don't know. Doesn't say.

But that's Jesus's interpretation of it. And the point is that the disciples first call it a waste.

They use the ever popular, it could have been given to the poor argument, even though since that comes from the lips of Judas Iscariot, and he was pilfering from the money bag anyways, demonstrates that question that there are people who are more than willing to use that as an excuse to cover their own greediness.

Don't get me started about modern politicians on that one. But it's an excuse and an activity as old as the scriptures, and I'm sure it went a lot earlier than that.

But they don't get it. They make the accusation it could have been sold for 300 denarii, that would keep you going for a long time, and given to the poor.

And they, according to Mark 14, and they reproached her. John tells us that this is where we get the information that Judas was pilfering from the money box.

And so his whole argument was hypocritical in the first place, but Jesus's response is, well, we do need to think just for a moment about what he said here, and I hope take it in a balanced way.

I heard Jesus criticized by Muslims just recently for what he said in Mark 14 .7.

As I recall, the Muslim put it somewhat along the lines of Jesus preferred himself over the poor.

So this Muslim basically put himself in the same position as Judas Iscariot.

Good job. Nothing like reading in context, that's always what I say, but anyhow. For you always have the poor with you.

You always have the poor with you. Exact same phraseology in both Matthew and Mark.

And it is likewise included in John chapter 12, the poor you always have with you, but you not always have me.

So here is a statement that, and by now

I'm sure you've noticed, there are just only a certain number of times that John jumps into the synoptic picture.

And it is very interesting that Luke isn't there. Luke does not record that.

We will see more and more places now where, as we get toward the end, the different purposes of each of the

Gospels and what the authors choose to include will become more and more of an issue as we work through the rest of the synoptic

Gospels. But what do we do with this statement? I mean, there are some who have taken this as a, ah, see, well, don't have to worry about the poor because they're always going to be there.

Well, that would, I think, be to isolate what Jesus said from everything else that he said.

It was clear that even though they themselves were, the typal band were supported by others, there were women who helped to support the ministry work,

I guess we could call it, yet they still gave the poor. But it is important to realize that the situation regarding poverty in the

New Testament needs to be appropriately translated to our day. What do

I mean by that? Well, the economies of that day were significantly more volatile than ours, primarily because what was the fundamental foundation of any economy in that day?

Agrarian. It was food. The only reason that you could have major cities develop, especially under Roman rule, was because there was enough peace to allow for major farms to be set up and for transportation in the cities.

Because how do we get fed? We go to a grocery store. Well, that food doesn't get grown in the grocery store.

It gets grown someplace else. And you have to have transportation. You have to have, you know, if the city, if the roads going in out of the city are in disrepair and there's constant fighting and thievery, the city's not going to survive.

So you have to have some type of stability. But still, because of the technological level of the day, you would have famines.

And remember the book of Acts talks to us about giving for the poor in the church in Jerusalem during a famine in that area.

And you could only transport food so far. I mean, dry grain, OK, you could put that in a ship, but how many ships foundered at sea and so on and so forth.

So without the type of storage that we have and being able to cold storage and things like that, you have a weather pattern develop like we had developed for, you know, nine years of drought here.

And we still don't, really not up to a good average and stuff, you could have major impacts.

There's all sorts of theories that that's what happened to some of the Indian tribes around here. Just sort of just disappear.

Because if you can't grow enough food, you've got to go someplace where there is enough food. That's just how it was.

And so the economies of the day were very fragile. And there were a lot of people who lived on the margins of those economies.

And on the margin meant the margin of life and death. The beggar on the street, you know, was as thin as a rail because he just wasn't getting much food and probably didn't live all that long.

And so the poor of that day were not poor who chose to be poor.

The poor of that day were not people who were unwilling to work and who had fried their brains on PCP.

They didn't have PCP. The poor of that day had to exist because the economy could not possibly support everybody and provide them with a non -poor wage.

Now, it could have been better because you had people who were hoarding and people who were stealing from the poor.

And oppression of the poor has always been there. But the point is that the economy of the day had to produce poor because just of its nature.

And so I think there is a fundamental difference between the poor that we see in the

New Testament and those who simply will not work.

I mean, let's be honest. Paul's advice to those who will not work is what? Let them not eat.

There were people who wanted to work, but there just wasn't any work to be done in that sense, many times, in this kind of economy.

And so I can't tell you how many times. I remember a time, I don't know, about 1998, 1999.

After church, this guy comes up to me outside. My car's had a flat over here.

Or I don't know if any of you remember, right around that same time, sometime within a year of that, this guy comes in in a wheelchair, right through that door.

And he has got a story. Wow. He just needs some money to get to,

I forget where it was. And he opened, he had a briefcase with him.

He opened his briefcase, and it was filled with prescription medicine bottles that he needed help with.

The longer you talked to him, the more contorted the whole story got, and where he was going changed, and the guy that said he had a flat tire,

I said, well, why don't I walk down there with you? Oh, no, no, no, no, don't want to do that.

I cannot tell you how many people. I used to go to the big church up at Central and Bethany and let me tell you something, talk about being a magnet of people with stories.

Man, they must have 30 people a day coming through there. And eventually, you start recognizing some of these people.

And you start recognizing the stories. It's just absolutely amazing. There are people who will live their entire lives just going from place to place to place looking for a handout.

If I had that kind of ingenuity, I'd be rich. But they won't apply it in that way.

It is absolutely amazing to me. And I don't think that's who Jesus is talking about. I don't think that's who

Jesus is talking about. And whenever you will, you can do good to them. I think he's talking about the poor who are truly poor.

They're poor because the economy cannot provide them. They're willing to work. They're willing to do what's necessary to do.

But the economy's just not there. The food's not there. I don't think that a lot of the people who are called the poor today would apply in this particular context.

I really don't. And the unfortunate thing is when people lie and lie and lie and cheat and then lie some more, it's hard to tell a difference between them.

That's the problem that we face today. So I don't think Jesus is simply saying, the poor always have with you.

Therefore, don't worry about it. But I think that we do have to think about the reality.

Part of this was an exposure of Judas' hypocrisy. There's no question about that. But part of it also is a recognition that man's economic systems, doesn't matter which one, will always be imperfect.

So we'll comment on the preaching of the whole world, the plot against Lazarus.

And then before we start the triumphal entry, review some of the important aspects of the synoptic issue next time we're together, which

I'm here next week, but I know I'm preaching next week. So I'm not sure whether I will be doing the Bible study or not. Depends on whether Mr.

Callahan is out taking dominion over the earth and killing some creature or not. Which he will then cook up for us on one of our

Sunday nights, and it'll be yummy. All right, let's close our time in order of prayer.

Lord, we do thank you for your word once again. We thank you that we can consider its precepts, make application to this day.

Lord, we ask that you would be with us as we go in to worship you now. We ask for the message that it will be clear and compelling to us, that your spirit would open our hearts and minds, understand your truth.