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DAY 1

Time: Several days before my telescope peek.

Place: The other side of the Dead Sea.

Our group stands amid the dry and dusty two-thousand-year-old ruins of Qumran on a desert mesa in Israel. We stare across canyons that encompass us, and notice caves dotting the faces of the cliffs — possibly the most significant caves in biblical archaeology.

In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy searching for his lost goat threw a rock into the entrance of one of these caves and heard the crash of breaking pottery. Investigating, he found several huge clay jars containing ancient documents. Among these parchments were copies of the Old Testament from before the birth of Christ: The Dead Sea Scrolls.

To understand the gospels — to get a grip on the ministry of Jesus — you have to start here. You have to go way back, before the New Testament was written. Back to the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the Old Testament to Christians.

They end with a longing for the appearance of God’s anointed one, the Messiah, who will judge wickedness and free the oppressed, restoring God’s people to glory.

SINGING THE BLUES

The last books of the Old Testament written, the books of the Prophets, sound almost like an old American blues song.

Something like (humor me and imagine a blues guitar riff after each line):

Oh we’ve brought ourselves so much sorrow,

And we wonder if God is real,

Will we be as stupid tomorrow

Or will we accept God’s deal?

Before false idols we’ve kneeled

And our worship of God is a joke

His will is plainly revealed

Help the poor, hungry, sad folk

Need to help the oppressed folk

God won’t you please come back,

And finish your promised story

Protect us from all attack

Restore the kingdom to glory

One day you’ll send a Son

Anointed to set things right

He’ll be the promised One

And shine with your heavenly light

Need to see that radiant light

Want to see the Son of Man’s light

OK, so I’m not a blues writer, but that pretty much sums up the themes of the last books of the Old Testament.

These were the ideas echoing in the minds of the Jewish people when Jesus was born. If a classic blues song longs for a love relationship, the prophets longed for God and his chosen agent, the Messiah, to soothe all sorrows and bring the Kingdom to true magnificence.

THE KING IS COMING

The oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a 2,250-year-old copy of the Book of Isaiah, predicts the coming of a Messiah in riveting detail:

Look! The ****** will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).Isaiah 7:14 NLT

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.Isaiah 9:6 NLT

Other Messianic prophecies found in the scrolls add more detail:

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.Zechariah 9:9

There before me was one like a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven… He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.Daniel 7:13–14

There are hundreds more. But — why were scrolls with all these prophecies preserved in caves at Qumran?

Apparently, members of an ancient Jewish sect, the Essenes, lived here in strict separation from what they considered to be the corrupt Temple leadership in Jerusalem. They were forbidden to marry, own any property, or eat hummus (just kidding about that last one). Their entire existence centered on the preservation and study of the Hebrew Bible.

When the Romans marched toward them in 70 AD as part of Caesar’s campaign to brutally suppress a Jewish rebellion, the Essenes hid their treasured scrolls. And they hid them well. The scrolls stayed hidden for nearly 1,900 years.

The caves also contained something else: Hundreds of Essene writings about the Messiah based on their studies of these prophecies.

So thanks to the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries, we know that prophecies about the Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures were not added back in by later Christian editors. They were there for hundreds of years before Christ’s birth. In fact, the teachings of the Essenes refer specifically to the “Servant Songs” of Isaiah, the “Seventy Weeks Prophecy” of Daniel 9, and various psalms as clues to the Messiah’s identity.

THE KING IS CLOSE

Then, around the time of Jesus, the preaching of the Essenes shifted. They began teaching that the time was now at hand, that the prophets’ predictions were coming true, that in their lifetimes, the Messiah would be revealed.

And what you could call “Messiah-Mania” swept through this part of the world in the first century. People knew the prophecies. They’d been singing those blues for hundreds of years. Now they were actively looking for the Messiah.

As I stand near the Dead Sea caves, I marvel at how God readied a landing site for the earthly ministry of Jesus. The idea of a Messiah didn’t just drop out of heaven on Christmas morning to an unprepared population. It was an inspired concept that God cultivated for centuries, furrowing and fertilizing the world for the seed to come.

The oppressed were hoping. The oppressors were fearing. Expectations were sky-high.

And then the hopes and fears of all the years were met just over the hill from Qumran, in Bethlehem, one night.

Yet no one, not even the Essenes after centuries of study, exactly predicted the kind of radical Messiah who showed up that day.

Ponder

How does it help your faith to know that Christ fulfilled ancient prophecies about the Messiah?

that's the end of DAY 1

**The Mountain and Mary

I can see it all the way from our hotel on the other side of the Dead Sea. From here, it looks like the silhouette of a massive volcano. Its slopes rise 2,500 feet above the surrounding valleys.

But this wasn’t always a cone-shaped mountain. And it wasn’t always this tall. This strange place is largely man-made. And it’s over two thousand years old.

It’s called the Herodium.

One of our best sources outside the New Testament for descriptions of the Holy Land in the time of Christ is the ancient Jewish writer Josephus, who lived at the end of the first century.

He described this place as “a hill raised to the height of a mountain by the hand of man.” He says that thousands of slaves reshaped the slopes and added hundreds of feet of elevation by using dirt shaved off a neighboring summit.

At the top today: The ruins of a pleasure palace and military fortress. Among other wonders, in the time of Christ it had a huge swimming bath twice the size of a modern Olympic pool. An aqueduct brought water from springs four miles away. Using mirrors to reflect the sun and send coded messages, the castle staff kept its inhabitants up-to-date with the latest news from Jerusalem. 1

VOLCANIC RULER

The man who built it was the powerful and paranoid Herod the Great, who ruled Judea as Rome’s representative from 37 to 4 BC.

Excavations in 2007 unearthed Herod’s long-lost tomb on the side of the mountain, and in 2010 a 450-seat theater that had apparently been built exclusively for use during Herod’s funeral was discovered.

But what’s particularly interesting is the tiny village that this mountainous fortress overshadowed — literally.

The little town of Bethlehem.

For centuries it had been just a wide spot in the road, known primarily as King David’s birthplace, after which it receded again into obscurity. It was called “the least of the cities of Judah” (Micah 5:2). In Joshua 15 there’s a list of Judean cities, and Bethlehem isn’t even mentioned.

After the Herodium rose to dominate the horizon, this little cluster of poorly constructed homes and shepherds’ caves shrank even further by comparison. The Herodium was a statement of power and importance, a destination for the elite who had earned the king’s favor, a glittering crown jewel in King Herod’s collection of palaces. Bethlehem was like the famous description of Oakland, California: “There’s no there, there.”

What’s worse, the volcano-like silhouette of Herod’s massive fortress would have been a grinding daily reminder for beleaguered Bethlehem residents of the threat of violent eruptions from their temperamental king.

MAD KING AND MEEK MAID

Herod clung to power against any and all challengers. Ancient sources say he had two of his own sons strangled, later executed his favorite wife, and on his deathbed ordered another son beheaded, all for suspicion of treason.

The contrast between the fortress mountain and the tiny village was much like the difference between the power-mad Herod and the meek mother of Christ, Mary.

A young teenager when visited by the angel, Mary had no aspirations of glory, no hunger for power.

She was not a pampered princess, she had no expectations of giving birth to a King.

She hadn’t even been praying for a message from God.

But she got one. “You have found favor with God,” says the angel. “You will bear… the Son of God.” (Luke 1:30–31, 35 ESV)

Mary’s response? Simply awe and thanksgiving at what God was doing by his grace.

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46–47) she sings, inspired by the Spirit as she reacts to God’s awesome favor. The Father sent the Son through the Spirit in the life of Mary.

THE MARY MIRACLE IN ME

And the Mary miracle continues: Although of course Mary holds a unique and honored place as the mother of Jesus, this is exactly the way God works in you and in me today.

“You have found favor with God.” Those are words you and I also hear. The word for “favor” there is the word for grace, which God pours on us before we’ve done anything to deserve it.

Just as he did for Mary, God is always the One who initiates, acting unilaterally, without any advance contribution from us to earn his favor.

OUR MAGNIFICAT

And we can react the same way Mary reacted, with praise and thanksgiving for the wonders he has done, is doing, and will do, in us.

Later when she visits her cousin Elisabeth, Mary bursts into a song we know as The Magnificat, the Latin word for “magnify.”

“My soul magnifies the Lord,” she sings. Her lyrics are rich with imagery from the Old Testament and focus on God’s grace to the unsuspecting and weak.

You can sing the same song, and for the same reason. Paul’s words in Ephesians about God’s grace to all of us sound a lot like Mary’s response:

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms… Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes… This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us… He has showered his kindness on us…Ephesians 1:3–8 NLT

THE MEEK OUTLAST THE MIGHTY

It’s interesting for me to trace the influence of first-century lives by the popularity of names two millennia later.

No one names their kid Herod. Or Pilate. Or Archelaus or Antipas, two of Herod’s surviving sons who had hoped to further the family dynasty (“Archelaus Schlaepfer” — now that would be a mouthful).

But names in the extended family of Jesus? Mary, Joseph, James, Elizabeth, David… Their popularity demonstrates their influence.

In the end, it would not be the power-mad king in the impregnable fortress who furthered the dynasty, but the pregnant teenager in the tiny village. The meek would outlast the mighty.

It was a pattern Mary’s son would continue. In the disciples he chose, the missionaries he deputized, the miracles he performed, he kept choosing the poor in spirit to confound the proud and powerful.

He chooses the least likely suspects. Like you and me. That’s the good news of grace. What’s your response?

Why art thou troubled, Herod? what vain fear

Thy blood-revolving ****** to rage doth move?

Heaven’s King, who doffs himself weak flesh to wear,

Comes not to rule in wrath, but serve in love;

Nor would he this thy feared crown from thee tear,

But give thee a better with himself above.

Poor jealousy! why should he wish to prey

Upon thy crown, who gives his own away?— Richard Cranshaw 2

THE MEEK OUTLAST THE MIGHTY

It’s interesting for me to trace the influence of first-century lives by the popularity of names two millennia later.

No one names their kid Herod. Or Pilate. Or Archelaus or Antipas, two of Herod’s surviving sons who had hoped to further the family dynasty (“Archelaus Schlaepfer” — now that would be a mouthful).

But names in the extended family of Jesus? Mary, Joseph, James, Elizabeth, David… Their popularity demonstrates their influence.

In the end, it would not be the power-mad king in the impregnable fortress who furthered the dynasty, but the pregnant teenager in the tiny village. The meek would outlast the mighty.

It was a pattern Mary’s son would continue. In the disciples he chose, the missionaries he deputized, the miracles he performed, he kept choosing the poor in spirit to confound the proud and powerful.

He chooses the least likely suspects. Like you and me. That’s the good news of grace. What’s your response?

Why art thou troubled, Herod? what vain fear

Thy blood-revolving ****** to rage doth move?

Heaven’s King, who doffs himself weak flesh to wear,

Comes not to rule in wrath, but serve in love;

Nor would he this thy feared crown from thee tear,

But give thee a better with himself above.

Poor jealousy! why should he wish to prey

Upon thy crown, who gives his own away?

— Richard Cranshaw 2

thats the End of DAY 2**

Like Father Like Son

The men and women are separate here. That’s part of keeping it holy, I’m told.

So my wife is on the other side of the fence as I wander alone through crowds of men at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the giant retaining wall that stands as the only visible remnant of Herod’s first-century Temple.

Jesus saw this very wall. And as he approached the Temple which then stood above it, he saw people much like the devout men I’m witnessing.

Just as they did in Christ’s day, these men wear phylacteries — small boxes containing Scripture — strapped to their foreheads to show their devotion. Many dress in centuries-old style: robes and prayer shawls with long tassels.

Foremost in their minds: Ritual purity. Strict observance of the law.

Their forerunners two thousand years ago expected the coming Messiah to be the purest of all, to restore perfection to Temple worship, to be the one man untouched by the impurity of the world.

And that’s what they got. But not at all the way they thought they’d get it. The strictly religious people were always surprised by Jesus, by the way he acted, the people he hung out with, the message he brought.

And the very first strict religious person to be surprised by the Messiah’s methods? Joseph.

Matthew calls him a “righteous man.” That phrase is a technical expression. In Hebrew it was a single word: Tsadiq.

This word meant Joseph was righteous according to the strictest interpretation of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Law of Moses).

Whatever Torah said, Joseph did. He was one of the men with the phylacteries and shawls and tassels, devoutly attending synagogue, attending to his prayers, reciting scripture.

He was pure. He was separate. He was tsadiq.

But, as John Ortberg puts it, Joseph was tsadiq with a problem. 3

Because, guess what the Torah says to do in his situation?

If a woman pledged to be married was found with child, and the child’s father is not her husband-to-be…

She should be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of the town shall stone her to death.Deuteronomy 22:21

The Gospel of Matthew’s phrase “public disgrace” is a soft euphemism for what awaited the pregnant Mary. But even though Joseph was one of the righteous, he finds he cannot lead the parade to his father-in-law’s house. And so he decides on plan B: a private divorce. Send Mary away. Get her out of town. End the engagement. But quietly.

This must have torn him apart, because already he would have been compromising his purity.

Then an angel appears. And tells him to do something else, something he would never have dreamt of doing before this.

“Take Mary home as your wife….”Matthew 1:20

This meant scandal. This meant rejection. This meant an end to his status as tsadiq.

Even though we know the child within Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, the people around them only knew what their eyes told them was true: Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph ever lived together as a married couple.

And yet Joseph acted in bold mercy toward Mary.

THE MESSY SCANDAL OF GRACE

I like to think that maybe, just maybe, when Jesus was leaping over the walls put up by his society to separate the religiously pure from the “sinners” — when he was forgiving the woman caught in adultery, talking to the Samaritan woman, teaching the “sinful” women — he wanted to be like his dad.

Like his heavenly Father, to be sure. But also like the man Joseph.

Joseph, who though ritually pure and devoutly observant, chose to obey God and live in scandalous grace –- rather than please the religious performers.

And maybe when Jesus taught that “your righteousness” — your tsadiq-ness — “must surpass that of the Pharisees,” he was thinking of his earthly dad: obedience that went beyond the rules and into reality. Mercy that got messy. Grace that got gritty.

PLOT TWIST

And then this righteous man hears an angel tell him the life mission of the child he will raise as his own:

“…give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”Matthew 1:21

His name was his mission. The very word Jesus means “Jehovah saves.” But the angel adds an unexpected twist to the Messiah’s mission: “…from their sins.”

And suddenly the Messiah’s purpose is crystal clear. It’s not primarily to judge the people for sins, or teach the people what is sin, or turn the righteous against sin. It’s to save people from sin.

The people were expecting a Messiah to help them fix problems with their religion and their government. But from the very start, the angel reveals a plot twist: The Messiah’s mission is not to streamline a bureaucracy or overthrow a king. Those would have been mere patches on the problem, Band-Aids on a much deeper wound. His was a mission of transformation at the soul level.

Matthew adds this was all meant to fulfill a prophecy: “They will call him Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us’.”

Here he focuses on another theme of the prophecies about the Messiah that had been overlooked: The Messiah was not just to be the representative of God with us. He was God with us.

This is the motion, the direction, the movement of the gospel: God stooping down to meet us, not us trying to get up to God.

These few verses contain the genetic code for everything that follows. Every action of Christ, everything he taught about himself, all that’s about to unfold, it’s all in seed form right here.

And after Mary and Joseph, the next people to hear of the Messiah’s mission are the most outcast of all.

Project

Think of one person you’re struggling to show grace to right now and write down one way to show them grace today.

that's the End of Day 3