Transcription of the Video: The Weight of the World

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony and 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. 

On the night before he died, Jesus went with his disciples across the Kidron (Cedron) Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane. The word gethsemane in that culture meant olive press. There's no olive press today in the Garden of Gethsemane, but there is one-- in fact, there are many in the town of Capernaum, the town where Jesus lived during is three-year ministry. That olive press, I believe, came to symbolize the weight that Jesus carried, the weight that Jesus felt as he went to the cross.

Welcome to the ruins, the town of Capernaum. Capernaum comes from two Hebrew words (kaphar meaning village or town, small village and nahum like the prophet Nahum). This was a town of about 1,000 to maybe 1,500 people in the New Testament time. And it was the place Jesus chose as his town Matthew says in Matthew 9:1. And he did a large share of his ministry right here. 

You notice the unique kind of color here with the black basalt rock that distinguishes the towns in Galilee, different from the places in Judea we've been seeing. 

One of the main things of significance in this town, you can look right over to this side and see the remains of a synagogue. The synagogue actually dates to the third or fourth century sometime after Jesus. But as you look closely, you'll notice that below the lighter colored limestone, you'll see the dark basalt. And most of the scholars believe that the original synagogue from Jesus' time is right below the remains of this one, and therefore, probably followed pretty much the shape this one does, the outline this one does. And by looking at it, you at least get an idea of what the synagogue was like; though, you need to know that's not an original. That's why we went to Gamla to see the synagogue. Because the Gamla synagogue was there in Jesus' time. This one was not. Although, the base was.

When Jesus had finished teaching this, he entered Capernaum. There, a centurion servant-- now why would a centurion be in Capernaum. Well the reason is this city controls the Via Maris. So we would expect a Roman garrison to be here. Because there were tolls to collect, and this was kind of like a district headquarters. So there's a centurion servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. "The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him and asked him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him. 'This man deserves to have you do this,' said Jesus' Jewish neighbors, 'Because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.'” (Luke 7:2-5)

So interestingly, the synagogue over here, according to the Bible, was built by the centurion who was in charge of the Roman affairs here. Now whether he was a believer in God or not is very difficult to say. But at the very least, we can say that the synagogue was built by the centurion and that made the people of the town love him, and therefore, they wanted Jesus to heal his sick servant. Jesus does of course. And he was amazed, he says to the crowd, at the faith of this non-Jewish Roman centurion. 

Also from this town, the disciples Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew came. So we can say that five of the twelve came from this town. Matthew in particular, a tax collector, who probably at in a booth of some kind along the Via Maris and collected the taxes.

This is the town that Jesus in Matthew 11 pronounces a curse on. Let me read it to you. "Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. 'Woe to you Chorazin. Woe to you Bethsaida. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgement than for you. And you Capernaum, will you be lifted to the skies? No. You will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this time. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgement than for you.'" (Matthew 11:20-24)

Now what scares me about that curse is that I'm the Capernaum of today. I've heard it all. I've heard every miracle of Jesus. I've seen his hand in your lives and in lives of other people. And when you've seen Jesus in action, not to respond is an extremely serious thing. And the strongest curses in the Bible are not for the most evil people but for the people who are evil who know better.

This is olive-producing country. The olive is very important for the economy of this country today. It was even more important probably in the Bible times. The olive was not only food, but it was the oil they used in their lamps. It was the only lubricating oil. It was the only preserving agent. They used it for almost everything that we would use petroleum or some kind of salve for-- they used olive oil.

So it was extremely an important part of their economy. Now one of the main industries of this town was the use or/and the construction of these. Notice the kind of rock. It's called basalt. It's very porous and extremely hard. When you find these large basalt instruments in almost every archaeological dig that's done all the way across the country, they have this kind of equipment in it, which must have come from the Galilee because that's where you find basalt.

So this town in some ways, you could say, was like the General Motors for crushers. It was a leading industry of this town. When you finally got the olives, here's how you processed them. You put the olives in this sea - like the Sea of Galilee. And then you take this large millstone with a stick through it like this, fastened to a post in the middle. And you would have a donkey or an animal grab ahold of the end of that stick an walk in a circle so that this huge stone rolled in here on the olives. He might walk around there for a few minutes, just rolling those olives. And what that would do to those black olives that were ripe is it would crack them.

When they're finished cracking these olives, they scoop them up and they put them into a bag. It looks a little bit like a burlap bag. They bring them over to this instrument, a large stone column here, which they then lift up and they stack those bags of olives down here on this base. Then they sat this large stone pillar back down on the olives and they leave it stand there. As that enormous weight begins to set down heavily on those olives, after a few minutes, that very precious oil begins to drip down into this groove and down into the pit where it's caught. 

Then after a while, they take the olives out and maybe crack them again, put them back and get another squeezing - a less grade olive but exactly the same idea. You'll notice that you don't see these in every private home. You could not, as a private citizen, afford to buy one of these things. What that meant was that a town like this, the wealthy or whoever owned it, controlled the local population. Because if you had 10 olive trees, you'd have to use their press to get the olives pressed and that's one way kings and lords and rulers exerted control over the local population. They managed the production instruments.

So that's how olives are produced. And that oil, that was almost a religious thing because of its connection with the whole idea of anointing and of Messiah. We can honestly say that the olive tree, in many ways for the Jewish community was the Messianic tree. 

There were two reasons for that. One, because the word mashiach, messiah in Hebrew, means to be anointed with olive oil. Priests were anointed. Kings were anointed. Prophets were anointed with some olive oil, indicating that they were gifted and called by God. So the Messiah - we say Jesus - was the one who was anointed in a special way. So since olive oil was used for anointing, he was the anointed one. 

The second thing about olive trees, we've seen already, is when an olive tree gets old, they cut it down. Because there's too much trunk for the leaves. The following year, a new branch comes out of the old olive tree. And lo and behold, after a period of time, you've got a new olive tree and new fruit and lots of healthy branches.

Now God, in the Old Testament, compares the unbelieving nation of Israel to an olive tree. And he says, "You didn't produce any fruit. But I was patient. I dug around you. I fertilized you. I kept you growing. And after a while, I looked. There's still no fruit." So God says, "I cut you down." 

Then he says, "Behold a new shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse and will become a new olive tree with new fruit." (Isaiah 11:1) Now the Jewish community believed that that new shoot that was going to renew and restore and revitalize the nation of Israel in their mission was the Messiah. The Messiah is the shoot or branch out of Jesse. If Jesus is the branch, the stem, "You," Paul says, "as gentiles, have been grafted in."

That means your roots are the Jewish people. That's our stump. You can't exist and bear fruit without the Jewish roots. Second, it means Jesus is where you get your life and your energy. But the key is that the olives you produce. And Paul says, "If God cut down the natural tree, what do you think he would do to you who have been grafted in if you don't bear fruit?"

Along the same lines of the curse on Chorazin. If you go back and you're going to suddenly realize, "I'm the branch. I'm supposed to be bearing the olives. God had the whole Jewish nation for what reason? To give me the life to bear fruit. Jesus came to be the new shoot for what reason? So that I have the life to bear fruit."

Now, the word for shoot in Hebrew is of the same root as the word Nazareth – nazir. So the Bible says Jesus' parents went back to Nazareth in order that it might be fulfilled. He will be called a Nazarene. Now a Nazarene is somebody from shoot town, branch town. So Jesus came from Nazareth to indicate to us that he is the branch. 

Let's set the stage with that for two things. Capernaum was a very typical Galilean town. And typically, in a Galilean town like this, there would be a town square somewhere near the synagogue where people would congregate. 

First of all, imagine on a particular day, this rabbi Jesus comes to his town, and he's teaching in the town square. And his disciples are there. That's his students. And they're all listening, and people are listening.

Meanwhile, there are some parents who do what was typically Jewish thing. They bring their children to be blessed by this important rabbi. Jesus' students are annoyed. They're probably annoyed about all the people gathering around to start with, because this is their faith lesson after all. But they're annoyed that these parents would interrupt with these little kids. "Don't you know this is important stuff for adults?"

Jesus stops that. And he says, "No. Let the children come. Bring them here." So they part the crowd, and here come these little children. And he takes a little child on his lap. "And he sits with a little child and he says, 'Unless you become like one of these, you can't have a share in the Kingdom of Heaven.'" (Matthew 18:2-3)

Now that in that culture was an incredible saying, because children, though they were loved and important, didn't have any status. I think what Jesus was saying is, "Unless you give up your human status, unless you stop thinking of yourself as being important and become like one of these unimportant ones, you really don't understand the battle plan for the Kingdom."

What's the battle plan? Make me unimportant that I can minister to you. Make you unimportant that you can minister to each other.

"And Jesus says, 'I tell you the truth. If you cause one of these little ones to stumble, they ought to take a millstone. They ought to hang it around your neck. They ought to throw you in the sea." (Mark 9:42) 

Remember what the sea meant. It's the power of evil. That's the abyss. "They ought to throw you in the sea."

I appreciate how Jesus felt about the people with no status - people who were unimportant. Whether that's the lowest member of your church, whether that's a little child, whether that's somebody in your school that nobody likes, I think that's what a little one is. 

And Jesus said, "You cause one of those little ones to stumble in their faith, they ought to put one of these around your neck, and they ought to throw you in there."

And again, reinforcing the whole concept of “it’s pretty serious business”. As you read the Bible, always think about the images of Jesus' message. That's a children's sermon. Not a whole lot like the sermons we often hear or we often give from pulpits with lots of big, wonderful flowery words. 

Let me tell you something. What Jesus said there in 30 seconds nails you right where it really hurts. Because you can see the child. Can you imagine this around your neck? And there's the sea. That's the kind of a teacher he was. 

There's a second thing here. If we think of Jesus as the anointed one, the olive shoot, this pillar is called the olive press. We say gethsemane. This is a gethsemane. And its job is to squeeze out of the olive that very precious oil. And Jesus lived with gethsemanes all his life, maybe walked by these very gethsemanes. They're old enough. 

Near the end of his life, after he had been here three and a half years, he took his disciples up to Caesarea Philippi and he said to them, "You go take on the gates of hell." And then as a great teacher, he said, "Let me show you how."

Down he walked to Jerusalem, past all these little cities and towns, past all of these crowds that had followed him around. He got to Jerusalem and after a week's ministry there yet, had his last supper, and he went out to the garden of the olive press, the Garden of Gethsemane. He got down on his knees and he began to experience the weight of what was going to be laid on him. 

And the weight of that was so incredibly heavy that it squeezed out of him his own blood. He was heavily pressed. So here's the image. This Jesus who taught and preached and did miracles and raised the dead and all the things we've experienced went to the Garden of Gethsemane and laid on him was the sin of the entire world, including you.

That weight was so enormous that he said, "God, please take it away. But I'll do your will."

The olives are Jesus. What is the weight? You. This is you. You are what squeezed out of Jesus as it were his own blood. 

I haven't talked much about salvation yet. But I'd like to have you think about that - the fact that Jesus' message not only was be loving and meek and changed the world. Jesus' message was, it starts with you becoming my Gethsemane. And even if I had been the only one who ever sinned, Jesus would still have had to go. He went to hell forever in six hours for each person that will be in Heaven. I think that's an incredible image that we need to see in his teaching along with his battle plan for the Kingdom.

Dear God, we stand here among very ancient pieces of equipment. Maybe Jesus saw these. We know he was here. We know he taught here. And he loved the people who lived here. In fact, he was one of them. I thank you for helping us to understand his Jewishness, his teaching way. I thank you for helping to impress upon us the lesson of not causing other people to be weakened, to stumble because of our insensitivity or our lack of love. Thank you that he always loved those who were little. 

Most of all, I'm just grateful today that in all our talk about Kingdom and about confronting evil that we discover that we're impowered to do that because you took on yourself the olive press, the gethsemane, the weight of my sin, and the sins of each one of us. 

Thank you, Lord, that we are new and free and clean and not guilty. And now we want to be grafted in shoots to your olive tree with the stump of the Jewish people so that people would note a lot of fruit in our lives.