Transcription of the Video: Language of Culture

Listen to the audio with transcription:  https://otter.ai/s/y0_ExEXcSKalwGy39bJpyA

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony, an evidence of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. It's been typical in my experience to imagine that the audience of Jesus' ministry was mainly common, peasant-type people with occasionally someone from the upper class. 

Not far, however, from the village where Jesus grew up (the village of Nazareth) was one of the great modern cities of the ancient world called Sepphoris, a city that had all the things that a wealthy city, in the days of Herod, the king would have - a theater, rich villas, a modern street, a town interesting enough, that was being built at that time that Jesus was working as a builder or a carpenter.

Welcome. It's a beautiful morning, a beautiful place to the city called Sepphoris or Zippori. We're sitting next to the ruins of an ancient theater. It's been excavated recently, only very recently in fact in the last couple of years. We're in the hills called the Lower Galilee. It's the area just above, just to the north of the Jezreel Valley. 

Over here, a very beautiful, fertile valley that takes you to the east a good distance, almost all the way to the Sea of Galilee itself, called the Beit Netofa Valley, a very fertile valley. It kind of dominates this area, and you can see why people would want to live and settle in this particular area. 

Now the reason we come here has to do with this location in relationship to the city of Nazareth. Nazareth is just to our south about three miles away. In Bible times, the city of Nazareth was a small town of maybe 300 people, all pretty well belonging to the same family. This town, Zippori, or Sepphoris by its Greek name, this town was a booming metropolis of maybe as many as 20,000 or 30,000 people. And that was a brand-new city at Jesus' time.

Let's talk about the history of this place. Herod the Great died about 4 B.C. His will divided his kingdom up among his three sons. Antipas, the builder of Tiberias, was given this section. Archelaus was given, in that will, the southern part of the kingdom. And Philip - Caesarea Philippi - was given the north. All three sons contested the will. So they all hopped on a boat and sailed off to Rome. At the same time, a delegation of Jewish people, particularly from Judea, from Jerusalem went to Rome to say to Caesar, "Please, no. We've had our fill with the Herod family. We don't want Archelaus to be ruling Judea." 

When Archelaus was given Judea, he came down here and brutally tracked down those people who had gone to Rome to try to talk Caesar out of giving him the kingdom, slaughtered them, destroyed their families, destroyed their homes and their possessions in a very brutal kind of way. And people never forgot that. 

Meanwhile, while the brothers are trying to all get the whole kingdom and contesting the will before Caesar, there's a revolt in this place led by a man, apparently, named Judah the Galilean from Gamla, the one the Bible talks about and says he was killed at the time of the uprising of the revolt. As they had an uprising, a revolt in this particular area, they plundered the armory here of the weapons that had been in this town.

Back in Rome, the emperor decided to honor Herod's will exactly the way he had written it. Antipas came here to this part of the country, now, to take over as its ruler. And he decided that this location would be a good location to build his administrative capital. Now, it's almost impossible for me to describe in words the beauty that this city had. 

It had a water system with a cistern found to the east here that was 1,000 feet long. There was a magnificent theater, the ruins of which you see in the background right here.

Down in Bethlehem, in Judea, Jesus was born. Herod the Great wanted to kill him, because Jesus was a threat to the Herod family - at least so Herod the Great thought. And they fled to Egypt. Herod the Great dies in 4 B.C. Joseph and Mary get word of that, and so Joseph and Mary come back up apparently wanting to settle down in Bethlehem. But the Bible says when they heard that Archelaus was ruling in his dad's place, they went and settled in Nazareth, where they had come from to avoid Archelaus because they knew him to be about as brutal as his father.

So they settled in Nazareth back where their family roots were. Among those people called the Nazarenes, people remember who thought of themselves as the shoot of Jesse, the stump of Jesse, from whom the Messiah would come. You really need to feel that - that that little clan of Nazareth people like that little town over there really thought apparently that they were the ones from whom the Messiah was going to come. They were the true seed of David. 

That's where Jesus settled down in order that he might be called a Nazarene. Now, Jesus settled down there with his dad, Joseph. He went through a typical Jewish boyhood, probably memorized the Torah as the missionist says happens. Then he went to Jerusalem for his first Passover. Then he comes back to this part of the country, and he begins to learn a trade. 

What's interesting about that to me from the Bible is that the word in the Greek that's used to describe Jesus' father's occupation and the trade he had is tektōn. Now a tektōn basically means a builder, an artisan, somebody who constructs things. And I'd like to have you just look around you and call to mind every tell that you've seen - the Caesarea, the Caesarea of Philippi. You name the city you've been in, and I'd like to have you recall that. I'd like to have you ask yourself the question, "If Jesus was a tektōn, someone who built, what particular trade would Jesus have had?" I think you'd discover that at the very least, if he did work with wood as we say carpenter, certainly that was only one small part of his trade.

Looking around here, you get the idea that not too many carpenters worked in these particular structures. This is a country and a land where everything is built of stone, and being built of stone, the tektōn was somebody who cut stones, hauled stones, placed stones, and built with stones.

So here's Jesus, three miles to the south in a little town called Nazareth. There's certainly not a whole lot of building going on there. "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" said Nathaniel. "Not much there."

And here's Herod, beginning about 2 B.C., building a city of enormous size. As much as 500 acres were covered by this city. Compare that to some of the tells we've looked at and ask yourself, "Where did Joseph and Jesus find work for a tektōn?"

I'm not going to tell you for sure that this stone right here, Jesus shaped with a chisel. But I certainly suspect that he and his dad were involved in construction if not in this city, in construction very much like this. Because that's where the labor was. 

I'd like to have you think of this as the world of Jesus. He lives in that little rural village, but his occupation probably brings him to the larger metropolitan areas to involve himself with this kind of construction. Now that's the background.

I'd like to suggest that this was very much a part of his world, and I'd like to just share a few things with you that you may find of interest. First of all, I've often wondered how in the world did Jesus afford to do what he did?

Most of us, if we're going to live out our Christian faith, have to do it in the course of an occupation. Where does money come from. Well he didn't obviously have a lot of money and he never seemed to have built anything or owned anything. He says he doesn't even have a place to lay his head. But let me read to you from Luke. I like this verse.

There's a woman named Joanna. She was the wife of Chuza, who was Herod Antipas's minister of finance. So here's this awesome city of Sepphoris, ruled by Herod Antipas, that powerful, wealthy king, who also built Tiberias later. And his minister of finance had a wife whose name is Joanna. She used her own money to support Jesus and his disciples' ministry. 

There's no question that Jesus had a two-pronged approach to wealth. Jesus often was extremely critical of people who used their wealth to abuse and oppress others or people who got their wealth by taking from others.

So he mingled with wealthy people, but at the same time, he represented the hurts and the needs of the poor. And I think all of us need to ask, "The wealth I have, has that been obtained in any way by taking advantage of someone else?" But on the positive side, Jesus had an appreciation, I think, for wealthy people who saw wealth as a tool. People, we would not be making this project today unless there were people willing to share their wealth to make this happen. So as you go into life's occupation, you should never ask, "Am I in it for its income?" 

But I look over here at Dr. Bowens. Here's a man, as a doctor, who could make a very good income in American society. He has decided instead to live in Mississippi among the poor people. If it happens that God puts you in a place where you become wealthy at what you do, I think Jesus' idea would be that the wealth is not for your sake, but for you to become a tool to advance his kingdom - just like everything else you receive from God.

So wealth is no different than your voice or your brain or the talents you carry in your fingers. Wealth is an opportunity like this unknown woman named Joanna who said, apparently, "I have wealth. My husband is an important man. I will use my wealth to support this obscure rabbi in Galilee, because I think his new order is where it's at."

I'd like to talk a little bit about Jesus and the theater. Now that's not something you hear a lot about, and I think in Christianity, we have tended to discourage Christians from being too actively involved in the theater arts as well as the film arts. But I'd like to suggest to you that Jesus was, at very least, very knowledgeable of the world of the theater. 

This theater would hold 4,500 people. You're sitting here next to the part of the theater that was supported on a platform. Over there, you can see that the base of the theater is actually carved right into the bedrock. Now some of this other stonework and so on here actually is later. There's a wall somebody built across the front of the theater that doesn't really belong there. So you have to imagine this open. Instead of all those little steps that look almost too small to sit on, you have to imagine that each one had a beautiful limestone seat all the way around so that it would be like a seat sticking out like you saw at Caesarea. And up above, another whole level with all seats sweeping around so that as the wind came through here, the sound would be carried up to the people who were sitting there. It's just a magnificent, glorious theater.

The plays that were put on, you probably would call offensive, maybe even pornographic at that particular time. In fact, the rabbi said, "Blessed is the man whose shadow will never darken a theater." So I suspect that it's unlikely that Jesus participated actively in the theater, but at the very least, Jesus was familiar with this. I'll say that for two reasons. 

One, living in this area where the theater was, you often saw or heard about actors. The Greek word for actor is hypocrite. A hypocrite to them was somebody who played out a role. And you play out a role to get a reward. What's the reward? The applause, the honor of the people for whom you're acting. 

Jesus used the word actor 17 times. Nobody else in the Bible uses it. Only Jesus. Which at the very least indicated that Jesus' audience was familiar with the concept. Let me just read to you a couple of examples from Matthew.

"Be careful," he says, "not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen of them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven. When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets." Interestingly, when a leading actor came on stage, they blew a trumpet. "Don't announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do and, on the streets, to be honored by men, I tell you the truth, they receive their reward." [Matthew 6:1-5] So Jesus is saying, "If all you're doing is giving to be applauded, you'll get your applause, but that's all that there's in it." 

"Rather," he says, "when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you openly."

Just the very next section in Matthew 6 [16-18]. "When you fast, do not look sad as the hypocrites," - as the actors - "do, for they disfigure their faces to show men that they are fasting." You can see those Greek tragedies where they would paint their faces into dark, negative kind of expressions. He says, "Don't act like the hypocrites. Don't act like the actors. I tell you the truth, they've received their reward. Instead when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face so that it will not be obvious to people that you are fasting but only to your Father who is unseen, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."

I'm not suggesting Jesus attended this theater on weekends. I'm simply saying he was very knowledgeable about this part of his world. He knew the language. He knew what would reach his audience. He could communicate because he was familiar not only with how poor fishermen lived, but he was familiar with how this person lived as well. And he used it with power. 

Another example of where this world affected Jesus is in Jesus' use of the concept of a king. It's in Luke 19 [11-15]. "While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought the Kingdom of God was going to appear." He said-- listen to this now-- "A certain man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then returned." Does that sound familiar? "He called 10 of his servants and gave them 10 minas. 'Put this money to work,' he said, 'until I come back.' But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, 'We don't want this man to be our king.'"

"He was made king, however, and returned home. He sent for the servants to whom he had given the money in order to find out what they had gained. The first one said, 'I've earned more and more,' and so on. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me." Now it's very fascinating that in his use of that parable, Jesus drew on a common experience he had with the kings of his day. 

Maybe just one more from Luke 7. One type of person that hung around this town, hung around this kind of area were the tax collectors. The tax collectors were commissioned by the kings of towns like Sepphoris, and they were sent out to collect taxes, both for Herod Antipas and for the Romans across the ocean. And here's a comment about Jesus. Jesus says, "The son of man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors.'" [Luke 7:34] That's the upper echelon of society. It would be a little bit like in America saying, "That guy's a friend of politicians." 

People thought of tax collectors a lot like we thought of politicians. Sometimes we think tax collectors are just so bad because they collected money. Tax collectors represented the administration. So here's a guy - Jesus - who mingles not only with lepers and women who had had diseases for 12 years and touched his garment, Jesus mingled with politicians and people of power. My point simply is the world of wealth, the world of power, the world of culture was also Jesus' world. And he was knowledgeable enough about it to do two things - to minister to people who lived in and to understand what images and tools and concepts would reach his world so that he could us those things.

So if it came from a phrase in the theater, if it came from the idea of an actor, if it came from an example of the life of a king, who lived in this kind of a world, Jesus was knowledgeable enough about those things - he knew his audience understood those things - that those things could become a tool that he could use. Isolation from culture is not, people, the solution to cultural change. 

Jesus did not isolate himself from this world. He made this enough part of his world so that he could use it in a positive way. He could talk about fishing with fisherman. He could talk about farming with farmers. And he could talk about the theater with people who understood the theater. He could relate to everyone.

If you plan to impact your world, if I plan to impact my world, we need to understand where our world is, where our culture is, and what reaches our culture. I think one thing exciting about this whole media project has been the fact that we all know that it's through television and media that our culture is shaped. And those are tools. And I think the tools of Jesus' day were the examples that came out of the theater and out of the king's palace and out of the tax collector example, because Jesus knew those things could reach his world.

So I really want to challenge you all of you, particularly those of you that are still seeking a life's occupation, ask yourself, "What is it that really shapes my culture?" If you believe that there's a new order coming up out of the Jordan River, then you ought to ask, "Where can that new order be effectively communicated? What is it that I need to know about my world that allows me to reach it?"