August 28th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible reading plan. Today is August the 28th, and our chapter for today is the Gospel of John, chapter 20. He's alive. He's risen from the dead, and he is alive forevermore. And he's coming again. That's the message of the Gospel of John. The Son of God has come. He has lived a perfect life in obedience to his Father. And the Gospel of John records in verse nineteen that he died as a substitute, as the Lamb of God that would take away the sin of the world. But when we come to chapter twenty, he is risen from the dead. He's no longer in the grave. But let's go back and just uh recap what happened in nineteen. I know that we're skipping a lot, but we cannot read every chapter in just three hundred and sixty five days and deal with each one. There's so many chapters. And so I pray that during these days together, you are forming a habit of getting in the Word of God. Remember, that's why we started this. Back in January we committed that we would go through the Bible chapter at a time together. And that's what we've done. And I'm so glad that you're still with us. When you read the Gospel of John nineteen, you have in the closing verses Jesus dealing with his mother, the tenderness of a son caring for his mother. Verse twenty five says, Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Cleopus, and Mary Magdalene. And when Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. Now many of you have read and have studied the life of Mary and the life of the apostle John, and tradition has it that John took Mary with him all the days of his life. Remember, they would have been not too many years apart, and Jesus would have taken John under his wing as a young boy, really as a teenager. He was the youngest of the disciples, he was the most trusted of the disciples. He stood with Jesus in the courtyard of Caiaphas when Peter denied him. John no doubt knew the high priest. His family was more than likely a big contributor to the temple complex, and he was so well known to the high priest and to the people that were associated with him that he is the one that got Peter entrance that night that Jesus was betrayed. All of this to say John was beside Jesus during the Passover meal. He was the youngest, he was the most trusted. That is the one that Jesus left his mother with to care for her and to make sure that she was taken care of after he ascended to heaven. If you go to Turkey today, near Ephesus, you will see the tomb of Mary, the mother of Jesus. You say, Pastor, do you believe that that is accurate? Do you believe that's correct? Yes, I do. I believe she would have been with John when she died in Ephesus, which was the epicenter of Christianity during the close, uh really the last quarter of the first century. And John was the pastor there, the beloved pastor. That's where he was pastoring when he was exiled to Patmos by the Caesar. And so after Jesus saw that his mother was taken care of, he cried out as many of you have read, and many of you who are listening who are pastors and teachers, you've taught this. He was thirsty. And after they had put a sponge to his mouth, Jesus received sour wine. He said, It is finished. Tatelesti is the Greek word, which means the debt has been paid. Paid in full. Tatalesti would have been written across documents. It would have been the word that would have been said when a debt had been paid. And whether it was large or small, it didn't matter. It was to telesti. And many who know the Greek text will tell you that this is in perfect tense. Now perfect tense is the tense that describes an action that has taken place somewhere in the past, and it remains in full effect unto the present. You see, Jesus paid the debt, and it is still in force today. And you say, What about the future? Well, that will be in force in the future, but it doesn't deal with the future, it deals with the present. And it uh speaks of a resultant state, that indeed the results remain and abide unto the day. And as you continue to read, you're going to see in verse 31 that it was getting close to Shabbat. Jews wanted to get these bodies down, and so the Romans granted that, and uh they were going to break their legs so that they would die, would not be able to push up, because uh crucifixion was basically death by suffocation. When they came to Jesus he was already dead, and so they didn't break his legs, but to make sure that he was dead they pierced his side, and when they did, blood and water ran out. And what that was simply saying is that his lungs were filled with water, that is, he had suffocated, he had died much like you would die from congestive heart failure when the lungs fill up and a person can no longer breathe. This is what would happen during the agony of the cross, and sometimes I have read in ancient documents where people would stay on a cross for two, three, up to five days. They would fight death. Jesus had come for this purpose, and for this purpose he died. That was to pay for our sins as God's substitute. He died a cruel death. It was really a torturous death. And after this, uh the Bible says that Joseph from Arimathea and Nicodemus came and we know took the body of Jesus. Joseph put Jesus in his tomb, his family tomb, a place where no man had ever laid, and the scriptures are fulfilled at every level here, and we really don't have time in this uh 15, 20 minute time we have together to go through what happened and harmonizing of the gospels, but it is a lovely account of two men who wanted to make sure that Jesus was properly laid in a tomb. And he was, and now we're after Shabbat on the first day of the week, what we call Sunday. Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Migdal, of the place that I've told you about around the Sea of Galilee, of Magdala, went to the tomb early. Now this would have been about daylight when it was still dark. In other words, she came just before the dawning of the day. She would have been ready to get everything done as the week began because it was as early as she could come after Shabbat. And the stone indeed had already been taken away. It had been taken away from the tomb. Now this was an amazing thing because this was a very heavy stone, and it had been sealed with a Roman seal. It had been guarded, but there was no sign of them. So she ran and came and told Simon Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they've laid him. Now Peter went out and the other disciple, and they were going to the tomb. So they both ran together. If there ever was an eyewitness account, this is it, and two men, John had to tell that he, the youngest, outran Peter, and that's exactly what happened. He came to the tomb first, and he, stooping down, looking in, saw the linen claws lying there, yet he did not go in. He wouldn't have gone in out of respect, but then Simon Peter came following him and went in the tomb, and he saw the linen claws lying there. What linen claws? The ones that they had wrapped him in. Now remember, all of the gospel accounts, when you harmonize them, Mary Magdalene and the other ladies were coming with a hundred pounds of aloes and spices, and they were going to give Jesus a proper burial. The body would have been washed and it would have been wrapped before Shabbat, just so that he would not be lying there naked, and they were going to come and do the proper thing as far as burial and the customs of the Jews were, and would have made very much these linen claws into what when they dried would have been like a cast, not a cast like plaster paris, but it would have been a kind of cast that would have been like a mole if someone got out of it. This is what Peter saw were these things, and they were not just cast aside, they were lying there, and the word means that they were set in place. Then the handkerchief that had been around his head, and it's translated handkerchief, but actually it's a sweat cloth. It's a face cover, and it was would have been used these kind of cloths for wiping the sweat from your brow, but it would have also been the word that was used for just a face covering for burying the dead. And it was folded together in a place by itself. Now there's been much that's been said about this tradition of the folded cloth, and you know, you'll read where it'll say any Jewish boy would have known. Well, any Jewish boy might have known, but it's not recorded anywhere. I would love to tell you this is true because it really is a great story and a great devotion. I just cannot find it in any of the Jewish sources. I can trace it back to about 2007, 2007, when some articles started appearing about it. But actually, when I've traced back the historical records, I can only find this in the European setting, not in the Middle Eastern setting, where if a man was eating a lord of the house, and he was not finished eating, but he had to excuse himself, what he would do is he would fold the napkin so that they would know that he's coming back, and then when he was finished, he'd just throw it up on the table. Well, that's a European custom, but I cannot find that as a Middle Eastern custom, especially during the first century, during the days of Jesus. Again, it's good preaching, but that just doesn't seem to be accurate. So you say, Well, what does that mean? That means that he did what he did in an orderly fashion. There was no hurry, there was no haste. Jesus simply got up, and as a spiritual body, those grave cloths meant that they could not hold him, he didn't have to tear them off of him. Why? Because he went right through them. Then he folded those uh claws up and he set the napkin off by itself, which would have been appropriate. In other words, it was all in order. You see, our God is a God of order, and he does things orderly, he does things with excellence, he does things with neatness, even in his resurrection. And so this is, I think, what this is talking about, just simply was this was no accident. This was done to show that no one came and stole the body of Jesus. Remember, this was the greatest obstacle they had to overcome, really, because the men were being paid according to the gospel accounts. When you harmonize them, you'll see that the chief priest said, Oh, we've got to do something here, because if the people get the idea that he's risen from the dead, the body's gone, we can't find it. These guards, we've got to pay them whatever we have to to make sure they follow the narrative that uh we've set out, because otherwise it's going to look like he's risen from the dead and he's who he said he was, he's the Messiah. And so you see, they had to cover that up. And so that's exactly what they did. Then the other disciple, this is verse eight, who came to the tomb first, went in also and saw and trusted and believed. For as yet they did not know the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away to their own homes. Now this is a fascinating statement. And then you have Mary coming back. Much has been made about her clinging to Jesus. What she was doing, basically, for just to sum this up, beginning at verse 11, all the way down through verse 18, is a story of Jesus and Mary thinking he was the gardener, and asking, Where have you taken the Lord? And when he spoke to her, she turned to him and said, Raboni, Raboni, which is to say teacher. Now this is John realizing that Greeks were going to be reading this gospel tract, and so that's exactly what he's doing. He's saying this is a way of saying teacher. And then verse 17, and Jesus said unto her, do not cling to me, quit clinging to me, is basically what he said, for I've not yet ascended to my father. You see, she was grabbing hold of him like he was going to be there from now on. And as you know, the ascension did not take place until forty days later. But he was already trying to get her to see, listen, things have changed now, Mary. I've accomplished what the Father has sent me to do, and we are simply in a new relationship now, and that's going to be better, but it's not built around me being with you. I'm going to my father as I told you I was going to and am going to, and you're going to have to get used to not having me around like I was because I'm coming to live in you. You say, Well, now wait just a minute. It's the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Well, yes, it is. But Paul said Christ in you is the hope of glory, the expectation of glory. What I'm telling you is that when the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts, then that is Jesus in us. That is the Father in us. Yes, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son are one, yet distinct. You say, Well, I just can't understand that. Well, my invitation to you is welcome to the human race, because nobody with our small, finite brains and understanding and discernment can get hold of infinity and transcendency. After all, we are the creation, he's the creator, and he knows a lot more than we do about everything, and it's not even in the same orbit, the same universe. He created the universe, we're part of it, a very small part of it, a significant part, but very small. What I'm saying is we won't understand this until we get to heaven. But we do know this. When we get to heaven, we're not going to see the Holy Spirit, we're not going to see the Father. We're going to see Jesus. Why? Because He is God walking, God talking, God doing everything that He did. And when we get to heaven, we're going to see Jesus. Why? Because in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And so we're not going to see three gods. There's not three gods, there's one triune God, and the manifestation of that God is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when we get to heaven, we're going to see Jesus. That's right. Because he is the fullness of God bodily. He's alive. He's coming again. Let's walk with him. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.