Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

We're moving on to a different section of topics. We started off going kind of taking a sweep through Bible history, and then we went through some of the different empires, and then other cultures. And now we're shifting into kind of topics. The first one here is, we call it the family tradition.

We'll be looking at Jewish culture in Israel with regards to families. And so we'll be looking at Jewish culture, specifically in Israel. Sometimes we find, once you step outside of Israel, a lot of variation because of influence from other cultures. And we're going to be looking at who, when, and where. That is, knowing that who, when, and where impacts what culture. is expressed.

Our focus today is going to be primarily on the Jewish home life in the land of Israel during the New Testament era. Our reason for focusing on that is because as we go through the New Testament, that understanding is really important. In fact, we're going to see today, even going through the book of Matthew, I'll give you a sneak peek.

One of the keys to understanding Jesus tells The disciples look for a man carrying water. And you say, how does that help? Well, the men didn't carry water. Culturally, the men didn't carry water. So if you find a man carrying water, that's unusual. And that's why Jesus would tell them, look for a man carrying water. So knowing that key cultural insight just opens the whole thing up. Otherwise, you'd be thinking, well, which of 15 guys carrying water am I looking for? Well, it was so unusual that it was obvious if you see a man carrying water, you got the right guy.

So anyway, we'll be looking at Jewish home life in the land of Israel during the New Testament era. It turns out the things we'll be studying here show up from the early chapters of Matthew all the way into the end of Revelation. We'll be looking initially at marriage. The first marriage of a Jewish couple would take place typically by the father's arrangement, the bride being in her early teens.

The Roman Empire said she must be at least 12. Which, to us, we go, what? Yep. And by the way, that's the same law in Uganda. At least 12. And the groom in his later teen years, typically about 15, was about as young as the groom might be. Which, by the way, is quite a bit younger than for the Greek and Roman marriages. Subsequent marriages were often arranged by the individuals who were to be married. That is, the father would arrange the first one, and then after that, the person would arrange for it directly. The father is considered to have done his job.

Though by Jewish law and Roman legal exception, polygyny was allowed for Jews, only a very few could afford it. You may be thinking polygyny. The reason I use that word specifically is this. Polygamy simply means multiple spouses. So it could be either multiple husbands or multiple wives. So to say polygamy, which is a commonly accepted term, is not specific enough because polyandry is multiple husbands. That was never practiced in the biblical record, but polygyny is specifically multiple wives. So that's the term. It's less commonly known, but the general use of polygamy is not specific enough. So anyway, that's the reason for the term.

Now, the prospective bridegroom would travel from his father's house to the home of the prospective bride. In other words, the father would already have made the arrangements. He would tell He would tell the bridegroom, here's the bride price that you're going to pay here. The bridegroom would then go over to the house of the prospective bride. He'd negotiate with the father of the woman to determine the purchase price of the bride, but that would already have been told to him by his father. That would be the usual.

By the way, a similar thing happened with Hassan, only his dad's not in the picture, so his uncle did the negotiating. Once the bridegroom paid the purchase price, the marriage was thereby established. The young man and woman were then considered to be husband and wife. We have the terms there. The purchase price of the bride is the mohar, and the document is the ketubah. From that moment on, the bride was declared by the groom to be consecrated, sanctified, set apart."

So how does the Apostle Paul write letters to the churches? One of the things, for example, even the church at Corinth says, you have been sanctified. It's not just you've been made holy, it's a marriage statement. He's trying to get that across to them.

As a symbol of the relationship that had been established, the groom and the bride would drink from a cup of wine over which a betrothal benediction had been pronounced. They would pray over the cup of wine together and then both drink of it. That was the ritual after the husband had told her, you have been sanctified for me. The father on the wedding day would tell the groom, go get your bride, which by the way, think about that. Isn't that what the heavenly father will tell the son? I hope it's today. Okay. Go get your bride. Then Stan and Jack won't even need to go see the doctor. Right? Okay. I hope the father tells the son, go get your bride.

The bride would be prepared and veiled for presentation to the groom. It would be considered the responsibility of everyone to preserve the bride as pure. Everyone. And then there would be a procession to the bride's home followed by a ceremony. And you see that little kind of covering there. The wedding party would go on for days as long as a week.

And so this is why, for example, Jesus turns the water to wine. If you misestimated the quantity, that was a terrible embarrassment. So Jesus was able to preserve the family from embarrassment. The bride would remain hidden for the entire wedding feast, then at the end the groom would present his bride to those gathered there when she would finally be unveiled before all.

You have a one-page supplement on the back here And if we have time, we'll go through that. That offers more details about the Jewish wedding customs and their connection to the church. The details and their connection to the church are really quite astounding. Yeah, Stan?

Okay, so I presume, if you want to use it as an analogy, that the rapture then is the beginning of the Bride. So is there a scriptural identity celebration prior to the presenting of the bride? A celebration prior to the presentation? What you said was, well he goes and gets the bride, which is the rapture, right? Yeah. The bride will be prepared at Baal. Okay, so the people who are raptured, they're being prepared at Baal when they get to heaven.

Is that correct then? Well, I think what you'll see is obviously there are going to be some things that are You know, a slight difference, but one of the things that Jesus says, John 14, I go to prepare a place for you, right? To take you to Myself that where I am you may be also. So what does He do? He takes us to the place He's prepared for us, right?

Well, and what you look at is the wedding supper is brought up at the end of the the tribulation period in chapter 19 and then the bride is presented as we come down with the Lord. So anyway, if we have time we'll go back through this but I just want to bring it to your attention.

The interesting insights into the situation with the church is amazing and all the references are there so that you can look them up. I mean it's It is fascinating and a great many people not seeing this or not knowing this will read these passages and not understand what's being said. But this provides huge insight from Matthew to Revelation. Almost every book of the New Testament has some connection to the Jewish wedding practices.

Okay. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Here's the one you were asking about there. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And He said to me, Write, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The Jews typically consider being fruitful and multiplying as a commandment. Which, by the way, Jesus set aside. But by Jewish tradition, they would see being fruitful and multiplying as a commandment. Matter of fact, if a woman did not have a child within a certain number of years, it was considered perfectly acceptable to divorce her. And it would be assumed that she was somehow disobedient if she didn't have a child. A lack of children was thought of as a moral issue.

I'm telling you what's culturally the case, not what ought to be the case. Under the laws of Augustus, 18 BC, Roman law taxed single people more heavily and required anyone of childbearing age who was divorced to remarry within 18 months. Now, they didn't have the marriage police going around and enforcing that, but let's say you had someone who was an enemy or you offended, they could turn you in. So that's how the law was largely enforced.

Childbirth took place, if possible, at home with the help of a midwife. We see that from the earliest books there in Exodus 1. The infant was washed with water, then salt and olive oil, then wrapped tightly with bands of cloth, which we see that would have been done with Jesus, right? Swaddling clothes, right?

So that would be the next custom. In the Greek and Roman culture of the New Testament times, the wishes of the father typically prevailed. As a matter of fact, there was a tendency among the Greek and Roman cultures for the father to continue to have direction over the wife even after they were married. So very strange. I mean, to our thinking, wow. But yeah, that was considered to be the case. It was legal to abandon, and this is again Greek and Roman, to abandon an unwanted child to the elements, or even for the husband to leave a command with the wife, if it's a girl, kill it. Things like that were perfectly legal.

That's in contrast to the beloved children of 1 John 3.1 and Ephesians 5.1. So this is one thing when you see in the New Testament, The treatment of children, the character of God, is in sharp contrast to the pagan culture. In the pagan culture, God, the gods, didn't love you. They never did. And they never blessed you. They just wouldn't. You had to do something to get God's attention and favor. It was works. Here is a God who saves you by grace. Here is a God who blesses you, and all you did was believe. Here's a God who loves you. Oh, Ephesians chapter 2, great love. This was mind-boggling stuff.

But to be a beloved child, that meant you weren't going to be subject to being abandoned or killed or beaten. We have, and it's a result of the influence of Christianity, we have things, and sometimes we object to the way it's done, but child protective services, for example. In the Roman era, there was no such thing. Beatings and sexual and physical abuse were perfectly okay in the Greek and Roman culture.

Not, however, in the Jewish culture. Here is a typical Jewish home. And what you see is the flat top roof. You see the parapet around the top. That was required by the Law of Moses. You had to have at least some kind of a wall sticking up so that people wouldn't just walk right off the edge. And they typically would have windows, excuse me, the windows would be high because that's your chimney. The windows would be high and fairly small so that no one could get through them in order to break into the house. So high and small was the typical pattern for the windows.

Deuteronomy glass, right? So that's the way it would work. So here is the law, Deuteronomy 22.8, requiring the parapet around the outside to avoid falling. Interesting, the law of Moses had some building codes. Yeah, building codes. Rooftop activities will include drying of food, prayer, and just general viewing. And we have examples with scripture references, one or more for each one of those activities.

Tents were also common. We think of a tent as an informal structure. However, in Old Testament into New Testament times, tents were a formal structure that had particular rules about how you behave in and around a tent. So the dwelling in tents began in pre-flood culture.

We saw it in Genesis 4.20. It extended into New Testament times, and Paul was a tent maker, right, along with Achille and Priscilla. tent makers, makers of formal structures, not just camping out informally like we tend to think of.

There were rigid social rules for entering and living within a tent, and violation of those rules could bring death. So, I mean, we think of a tent as just, we can do anything in a tent. Well, there were rules so rigid that doing the wrong thing and you're authorized and allowed to even kill someone for breaking the rules.

Now, keeping warm and well lit. Fires for cooking and warming oneself were often burned outside. And we find that pattern in the New Testament. And where was Peter when he was warming himself along with the others by the fire when he denied Christ? He was outside in the courtyard, right? Fires inside a home often had no chimney, so there was smoke and soot in the upper air of the rooms and the windows being vents. The windows were where the smoke came out.

Anybody like to volunteer for having that? Not so much, right? The lamp was always to be kept burning and as we've made the point in the parable of the ten virgins, it was considered a primary priority, important responsibility of the woman of the house to keep a lamp burning and to plan for it, to provide for it, do everything, and to let the lamp go out was just as shameful and irresponsible as could be. That was considered a great dishonor. So that's why when Jesus told the story and said these women came without enough oil, it was like, oh man, and then they went to sleep. Unthinkable! So understanding that aspect of the culture is real important to understanding the parable, right?

So among poor families, animals often stayed inside the home in a lower section. That is, you'd have people up on stone and then the animals and fire and things like that down in an earth section nearby. Sometimes you take advantage of the terrain to build that in a little more easily. Here, for example, would be something typical in hilly country where you'd have the residents living in this area and then off to the side here would be an overnight stable to bring the animals in.

This is the Cataluma, which is the word that's translated in in the Christmas story. There's no room in the Cataluma. and people think of an inn like, you know, it's some sort of a hotel or motel or something. No, it's this little side room for the animals and that's where guests would stay.

They, by assumption of the Mosaic law, would have to have a temporary dividing wall put up between the Cataluma and the regular living space in order to avoid constructive adultery. That is, Joseph and Mary, if they were going to stay in somebody's Cataluma, would have to find a place where the people had the material to build that temporary wall, right in here, to divide up the spaces. Lacking the temporary wall material was all it took for the people to say, there's no room in the inn. They might have room, but they would have to tell Joseph and Mary, you can't stay here, because I don't have enough material to make a temporary dividing wall between our living spaces.

Isn't that amazing? OK. OK. Home life. Given the hotter climate, everyone tended to start their day early, especially the mother of the home. The women worked hard, typically. Her daily duties included starting the fire if it had gone out, and of course, she kept the lamp going all the time. And so if the lamp went out, that was like, oh, how horribly irresponsible, right? So they would at least keep the lamp going. So she would start a fire, get in water.

Again, it's the woman's responsibility, right? getting water, milling grain, baking bread, shopping for food and olive oil, and making clothes and washing clothes. Those things would occupy a good deal of her time, and going back and forth to get the water and making sure there's oil and all those kinds of things. Here is the Pool of Gibeon.

2 Samuel 2.13 describes this. By the way, by modern times, this had been completely full. And in order to excavate it to get down to the pool, they took out many tons of material, because this is fairly large. The second Samuel account describes soldiers being on either side of this pool looking at each other.

Here is a cross-sectional drawing of what it looked like. And what you see is up here, the stairs go down. Here was the initial depth of the water. And as the water level dropped, they dug down to here. So you had to go all the way down, essentially a spiral staircase to get down into the bottom part where it was dark.

So, now, Proverbs 31 often looked at as, okay, here's the biblical woman. Well, this was the biblical woman in that culture, right? And boy, is she busy. What I would say is this is in the context of the culture, it's important to take a look at how that fits.

Example, give her the products of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates. Well, we don't have gates, right? So the gates mean something different. So we have to look at this passage in view of the culture and not simply try to carry it directly across. Now, something else.

Rest from the heat. In the middle of the day, it was oftentimes cooking hot, especially if you've got no cloud cover or anything. Just cooking hot, very sunny. And so, you know, even getting some palm trees or something like that to get underneath would be a good thing, especially out in more desert areas.

For the most part, raising and educating the children was the parent's responsibility. The parents were primarily responsible for that. Homeschooling was the norm, right? Children were taught to do chores in keeping with their gender roles as they were able and fitting to their age.

So, you know, if you're a boy, you're going to be taught one set of skills and understandings, and if you're a girl, you're going to be taught another set of skills. And the roles were quite different in a great many respects. Boys were taught things about the Old Testament starting about age three. Hebrew school, right? Sometimes a rabbi was involved with that. Girls as needed to fulfill their domestic role. So the girls were also taught things, but they were taught in the context of carrying out their domestic role. You're not going to fix pig meat for breakfast, right? No bacon, right?

So things like that. Boys were trained in their father's trade as they got older, typically starting by about 10. So if Jesus was about 12 when he went to the temple, as the account says, how long had he been in apprentice training under his father Joseph? A couple of years probably by about that time, right? That would have been typical. Oh, one more thing. We'll talk about it a little bit later.

A carpenter. Did Nazareth have a lumber yard? No. So a carpenter is also a logger. And a carpenter is also a mason. So there's a wider set of skills to being a carpenter in those days and in the biblical context. So here is an artist's depiction of Jesus under training with his father Joseph. Sleeping arrangements and household security. The door was barred at night. This is reflected in more than one place in the Gospels. And the family typically slept all together on mats. That was the typical thing.

Security of the house was a personal responsibility. We think of security, of course, we have security systems and you can get today, get electronic, you know, things to help keep the house secure. In those days, security was a personal responsibility. There were no police to call. And keeping your house safe and even chasing after the thief was your responsibility. There was no police to call. And it was not a criminal problem. It was a civil problem. Different mindset, huh? The Roman law did not consider theft a criminal act, but rather a civil act to be remedied in court.

You catch the guy, you go back there and take him to court, which would in Israel be in the synagogue. You take him to court and then the judge says, okay, how did you steal this? Okay, that's four times. three times whatever the condition, the compensation. The thief owes him this much back. That's the way it worked.

Animals and any other valuables, including tools, would often be kept inside the home. It's quite possible that Joseph's and then Jesus' carpentry shop was right inside the home. To have a separate building for that was oftentimes just more than one could afford. Here is some examples of things being done.

Remember, you read about in Matthew 24, Jesus talks about two women grinding at the mill, right? So here would be a hand mill. And by the way, you couldn't keep the hand mill stoned as an earnest deposit because that kept people from grinding their food, according to the Mosaic law.

So that's Deuteronomy 24.6. But this would be a typical thing. One would turn it and the other person would be letting the grain drop in a little at a time. So that's what you see here in this picture. Here you see the guys are there by the water's edge and all sorts of things at the water's edge. You'd be washing clothes. You'd be taking the fish in.

By the way, you catch fish, can you eat them all if you're Jewish? No, you can't eat them all. So you've got to separate. The first thing you're going to do if you catch a bunch of fish like in a net, you're going to separate out. This fish I can sell to the Jews and eat myself. This fish over here I have to sell to the Gentiles and throw it back. And you've got to sort it all out.

Mending the nets. You've got to mend the nets all the time. Why? It's because, especially at the north end of the Sea of Galilee, there's lots of rocks down below. And so the net gets caught on the rocks. Basalt. Sharp, heavy stones. And so the net gets caught in the rock, and as you pull the net, then you're likely to tear it. So you have to mend it.

Here's the home life and everything related to that. The woman is expected to keep very busy, very productive. That is highly prized in the Jewish culture. And here are some lamps, very commonly found by archaeologists, by the way. Every home had a lamp. Many homes had multiple lamps. And it was the woman's job, once she got that lamp, keep it in oil and keep it lit.

Okay, few are fortunate enough to have the water well or the marketplace right next to them, so daily trips to these places would be the normal pattern. The woman's going to go to the well at least once, and she's going to go to the market at least once every day. Walking, walking, walking, carrying, carrying.

Here's a Middle Eastern well, and by the way, what time would the women go to the well? Pardon? Actually, they would go early in the day, right? And matter of fact, they wouldn't go midday because it was hot. And so the women of ill repute went later in the day, which is when Jesus met the woman at the well. Here he goes into Samaria, and then he goes to the well in the middle of the day. Who's he going to meet there? Right? Why? Okay, meal time. Meals were simple.

Eat generally without utensils and the staple bread was often dipped into condiments and sauces. So you don't have like here's the fork and the knife and the spoon and all that. You take the bread, you break it up, you use it to scoop up the different things that you're dipping it in. And so everything else would be eaten with that. So that would be the usual pattern of eating.

Meat was typically not a major part of a meal except for special events or among the wealthy. It was expensive and typically the animals were kept for other things and then meat was like when the animal is getting towards the end of its life typically. Fish also was a common protein staple. We did New Testament history, the life of Christ, we had a section on that. Fish was in three forms. Fresh fish, which was, you're only going to have fresh fish if you live right next to the lake or the ocean or something like that.

Because there's no way to keep it, right? So the two ways of keeping it are one, drying it, which would either be done in racks or they would lay it out on the rocks and put it in layers and between the layers pour in rock salt. And then put in layers and dry it, there it was salted.

When the boy had the fish and loaves and Jesus broke it up, Jesus wasn't breaking up fresh fish. He was breaking up the little crispy pieces of dried fish. Sometimes the artist, you'll see them with these fresh fish, not too likely. The third form was ground up and fermented, and the Romans loved that. That was a staple for the Roman army, was ground up and fermented fish. Any volunteers? It's still, by the way, eaten and ground up and fermented in parts of Asia. And they have special dishes for it. Okay. Bread eaten daily, give us this there, daily bread, right, was not sliced but torn or broken off. And if it was made in a flat form, of course, just snapping it would be typical.

Milk from sheep, camels, or goats. And let me tell you, I've never milked a camel. I have milked a goat. Milking a sheep is just a lot of hard work. Anyway, it was used to make butter and yogurt. So that would be typical. Camel milk, by the way, is making quite a comeback in the Middle East and North Africa. Yeah?

How did they ferment the fish? I'm just curious. Was it with wine or something or did they just let it rot? They basically just let it rot and the oils would rise to the surface and that was like, they'd use that like butter. But yeah, it would just rot.

And in fact, they even had grades of different grades of fermented fish, and the officers got the higher grade of fermented fish. And here's the amazing word. When Jesus was resurrected, remember the disciples are out on the boat, and he's on the shore, and he says, boys, have you got any fermented fish paste? He used that word, prosphagion.

Okay, fruit was eaten regularly as were nuts and sometimes the fruits may be a little different than what we would commonly eat. Pomegranate was a common one as well as dates and other things too. Food was often sweetened with wild honey or boiled down grape juice. Only very recently have they found any evidence, and this was in northern Israel around Hazor, any evidence that they had honey from bees and had any knowledge of how to do that.

Yeah, Tom? Yes, yeah, it's funny. He was essentially, we would say he was making a joke. You know, because we call them boys. He uses, you know, the term for younger ones. Yeah. Why is honey sometimes considered negative by Jan? I think it was in the book of Judges with Samuel or Samson. Samson, yeah. The context there was the bees had made a hive in a dead body. So that's the connection. For Samson to have touched that dead body was the problem. It wasn't particularly the honey.

Porridge and dips were made from lentils and vegetables of different kinds. And the typical thing, bread being your eating utensil, they would make things often, you wouldn't have large chunks of something, you would grind everything down so that you could use your bread or the unleavened pieces to scrape up and get hold of something that's more pasty in consistency would be thought of generally as better. Eating was done reclining, sometimes with a table. A number of references here in the Gospels to reclining. What you will see, some of the artistry, particularly during the later centuries, some of the artistry shows Jesus having the Last Supper and they're all sitting around in chairs. Wrong answer. That's taking the context and moving it into our culture.

That would not have been typical. If Jesus had come in and said, well, where are the chairs? They'd have gone, huh? What's a chair, right? Typical social gatherings would be like this. Sit on a mat, a low table, sometimes even just a mat to eat off of. That would be the usual.

Who one ate with and what and how one ate was a big issue among the Jews. See, notice it's not just what are you eating, but who are you eating with and who's at the head of the table. All those are big things. And men and women don't eat together. You don't do that. If you're eating together with women, well, they must be a prostitute. I mean, so there's all sorts of little conclusions about eating that to us would be a little puzzling. We would say, hey, here's a family sitting around the table, and no, no, the men eat and then the women eat. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, right. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, wouldn't happen.

Men often ate separate from the women. In a social gathering, the seat at the table was according to rank. By the way, men eating with women was more commonly done in the pagan culture, not in the Jewish culture. Others peering in through the doors and windows and making comments was normal behavior. And that's something you see in the Gospels, but most people are kind of puzzled by that. That was considered normal behavior to have people looking in and making comments.

Sometimes, you know, you might even just walk in and try some of the food. That was just normal. And to us, we'd think, you know, boy, call the police or get out of here. How rude, you know. But to them, that was just normal behavior. So you would have, you'll have recorded in the Gospels, here's Jesus eating with people and you have people commenting about, look who he's eating with and, you know, that kind of thing. And that was just normal behavior.

And to us, we think, wow, we'd get upset. We'd get upset. You know, you invite some guests over and you think we're going to have a nice time with your guests. Now guess what? The whole neighborhood's there. That's standard operating procedure, right? Oh, by the way, the windows are high and that's where you let out the soot, right? And so the only way to get real good ventilation, however, is to have the front door open, which invites people to come and make comments and watch and all that.

In New Testament times, this is regarding the prodigal son, it was legal for a son to ask for his inheritance when his father was still alive, though this was severely frowned upon and discouraged. It was thought if you did that, while it was legal, it was thought that if you did that, that you really wished your father dead. I mean it was that kind of thought process and background to it. It meant apathy or even a wish that the father was dead. Accounts of asking for and wasting the inheritance to the point of poverty can be found actually fairly commonly.

So what Jesus talked about with the prodigal son was like, oh yeah, I've heard that story before. Okay? Yes, Dan? So if he was accepted back in Ammon, like in the prodigal son, not that he was as a slave, but if he was accepted back, Does that mean that he would have gotten another inheritance?

Well, yes and no. Being accepted back was like, that never happened. So what you do under those circumstances is, you know, it doesn't happen. So, you know, what's the standard operating procedure? There isn't one. However, the father treated the son who was returning as if he was going to get an inheritance again. Yeah, so let's take a look at it. The best a son could hope for after that was to be taken back as a slave, but stoning him was not unheard of. What? You come back after wasting everything and you want us to be accepted? They were often very badly treated and even to the point of stoning them. It was considered extremely vile behavior. And matter of fact, coming back was a risky thing to do.

So it meant that the prodigal son was in a spot where he just had no alternative, right? What came as a shock to the parable, in the parable was the response of the father. Because the typical thing was, I'm not looking for him, but if I do see him show up, you know, he's going to study rock real close. And that's the last thing he's going to do is study rocks real close.

So he got up and came to his father, and while he was still a long way away, his father saw him and felt compassion for him. That never happened. So up to this point, everybody's saying, yeah, I've heard this story before. What? This was shocking. When Jesus said that and ran and embraced him and kissed him. that never happens. That never happens.

The response of the son who remained, however, would have been typical. Had any father in those times ever accepted a son back as did the father in Jesus' parable. So Jesus told a story here where everything up to that point would have been normal, but the father's open and eager acceptance of the son back would have been considered very extraordinary. And then the behavior of the older son would have been typical again. Okay, next time we're going to talk about religion and politics in New Testament times.

Yeah. Okay, the older son, I'm just curious. Yes. Jesus was telling a story in the company of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Yes. The people who believed that they were saved because they were born in Abraham. Yes. They didn't understand that they had to be born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus. Yes. So, could the older son be an illustration of the Pharisees? Absolutely. Because of their self-righteousness? Yeah. Absolutely.

Because the older son did not do that. Yeah, here's the older son and he's thinking, you know, I'm in a great spot here. You know, I should be getting everything that's left. And this guy ought to be, you know, run out of town at least, if not stoned to death. And now to see the father looking for him and embracing him and kissing him and, you know, let's throw a party. This was just, you know, popping his fuses. He couldn't handle it.

You mentioned Nicodemus. Here's another cultural thing. Jesus told Nicodemus what? You must be born again. Do you know that there were six different ways that a Jew could be born again? And Nicodemus had most of them. If you were a rabbi, you were born again. If you had a rabbinical school, you were born again. So when you go down the list for Jesus to tell Nicodemus, you must be born again, Nicodemus is mind blown. He says, I'm as born again as you can get. What do I have to do? Go back into my mother's womb? I mean, I can't. How do I do it?

So it's understanding the culture that gives you insights into the things that are going on in the New Testament. And sometimes people not knowing these cultural backgrounds, they won't get the point. Why is the story of the five virgins who didn't come with enough oil, why is that a big deal? And why is it a big deal that they fell asleep? Why is it that Nicodemus would be stunned to be told he had to be born again when he's already born again about four times?

So these things provide tremendous insight. As a matter of fact, for a lot of these things I'm studying through it, if I'm not surprised and stunned and amazed, I probably don't understand it yet. Almost every passage, that's the case. And we're going to see that You're going to see that here in today's passage about the man carrying the water. Yes. They had, let's see, I'd have to go and look it back up.

I remember there were six of them. One of them, one of them that he couldn't do was to be a Gentile. that converted to Judaism. That was the one that he couldn't do because he was obviously Jewish. So anyway, he was only eligible for five of them, and I think as I go through the list he had four of them, but I've forgotten the entire list.

Yeah. And yet, every one of those probably is in direct opposition to being saved because you're a child of Abraham. There was something from the person that they had to do to receive this baby. It can't just be children of Abraham. That's right. And if you look at it, none of the six were the born again that Jesus was talking about. Which is why Jesus would tell them that. You must be born again. He's thinking, man, I'm born again, again, again. Right? And in reality, he needed a born-again that wasn't on the Jews list.

Anyway, the back page there on the handout has a whole one-page listing, a fair amount of detail and references to look up that gives you more insight into the marriage practices. We just kind of hit the high spots in order to be able to get to some other subjects.

And then next week we'll get on to this talking about religion and politics. Isn't that something here? In polite society, that's how you keep out of arguments and personal difficulties. You stay away from religion and politics. Well, we're going to talk about it next week. And as we'll see in a week or two here, looking at pilot's behavior, typical politician, right? Typical politician.

And he also crashed and burned too. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at these things. Thank you for the insights that we get into your word. Thank you for the understanding that we can have. And we thank you for revealing the truths that you've inspired in your word because you love us and care for us so much. We thank you for your great love with which you loved us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.