DCW week 9 -Crucifixion

Good morning One River,

We’re going to keep this week a little shorter so we can all make it to our church wide luncheon.

We’ve been on a journey to explore a new cultural lens of biblical understanding. Called the Divine World Council approach. We’re attempting to see a fuller picture of Yahweh’s supernatural universe in scripture. This approach shows us that there is more to the supernatural world than Angels, Demons the Trinity and humanity.

Yahweh was equally as creative in heaven as he was on earth. And those supernatural creatures called elohim, are still an influence on humanity, even today.

Last week we looked at the Transfiguration of Jesus. This was the Gospel account of him taking the disciples on a field trip to an area called Banea or Bashan, climbing to the top of a mountain and transforming into, at least, partial God-mode.

His message during this encounter was two-fold. He wanted to reassure the apostles that they were loved by Yahweh and on the right path. Given his previous revelation about the tasks that lay ahead for them. Namely, building the church over the gates of Hell. He also wanted to signal to the wicked elohim, the powers of evil, that he was there to play. The stage had been set and he was ready to start his final battle campaign.

Jesus set the stage for the development of the new church on “the gates of hell”. He fully understood all the supernatural ramifications that this meant. He also told the boys that he would soon die. Something completely unexpected for the disciples to hear. Jesus was ready.

I want to read a Psalm here and do a little comparison if we could.

Psalm 22:1–31 (NIV)

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from my cries of anguish?

2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;

you are the one Israel praises.

4 In you our ancestors put their trust;

they trusted and you delivered them.

5 To you they cried out and were saved;

in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,

scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;

they hurl insults, shaking their heads.

8 “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,

“let the LORD rescue him.

Let him deliver him,

since he delights in him.”

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;

you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.

10 From birth I was cast on you;

from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,

for trouble is near

and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls surround me;

strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

13 Roaring lions that tear their prey

open their mouths wide against me.

14 I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;

it has melted within me.

15 My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;

you lay me in the dust of death.

16 Dogs surround me,

a pack of villains encircles me;

they pierce my hands and my feet.

17 All my bones are on display;

people stare and gloat over me.

18 They divide my clothes among them

and cast lots for my garment.

19 But you, LORD, do not be far from me.

You are my strength; come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver me from the sword,

my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;

save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

22 I will declare your name to my people;

in the assembly I will praise you.

23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!

All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!

Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or scorned

the suffering of the afflicted one;

he has not hidden his face from him

but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;

before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.

26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;

those who seek the LORD will praise him—

may your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth

will remember and turn to the LORD,

and all the families of the nations

will bow down before him,

28 for dominion belongs to the LORD

and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;

all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—

those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30 Posterity will serve him;

future generations will be told about the Lord.

31 They will proclaim his righteousness,

declaring to a people yet unborn:

He has done it!

Did you guys know that until Jesus’ death this was never looked at as part of the Messianic prophecies. We can compare this to Matthew’s Gospel and see several points of convergence.

Matthew 27:32–56 (NIV)

The Crucifixion of Jesus

32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). 34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” 44 In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

The Death of Jesus

45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

55 Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. 56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

There are 14 points of convergence between these two scriptures that point out the idea that the messiah was always meant to suffer death. Why am I bringing all this up? Basically, to show that Jesus was not the type of Messiah they were looking for.

But we knew that.

So, what exactly were the Jews of Jesus’ day looking for?

1) The Messiah will be a human being descended from King David, although he will have superhuman qualities and abilities.

Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons and multiplied food. He also Transfigured. – But Jews were looking for military superiority. They wanted immediate earthly freedom. Jesus’ powers lent themselves to the supernatural world and the more pragmatic nature of man.

2) In the Messianic Age, Jews will triumph over the enemies of Israel. This will lead to the destruction of weapons and people living in peace. –

Again, the Jews are looking for a militaristic savior. They were looking at physical, human, earthly enemies, not the supernatural elohim that Jesus actually came to free us from. Jesus did conquer the human enemies of Israel; he defeated the enemies of Yahweh. Jesus took down the wicked elohim that were influencing Yahweh’s people.

3) The Messianic Age will be a sign of the end of the world and the physical resurrection of the dead. –

Jesus did physically resurrect himself from the dead. Not only himself, but other religious leaders and prophets as we see in Matthew. He descended into Hell and grabbed the keys to the cells of death. But this ultimately led us to the stage of the already-not-yet.

4) The Messiah will rebuild the ancient Temple in Jerusalem and restore the authority to rule over Israel to the descendants of King David. –

Jesus did this, by resurrecting himself and moving the temple from the earthly structure in Israel to the human soul. Now with the introduction of the Holy Spirit, the temple lives in us all. Jesus is a direct descendant of David, and he rules eternal.

This goes back to the idea that the enemy, the evil elohim, devils and demons, never knew what the plan was. The idea of a suffering servant in the form of a human God was preposterous. The Jews didn’t see it. The powers of evil didn’t see it. Even the apostles that were following Jesus didn’t really see it until it was all over with.

So, what was Jesus’ plan? What exactly did happen at the crucifixion?

Well, if we look back at the law there’s something there you may have never noticed before. See we get in the habit of reading the NT through the lens of what’s happened in the OT and vise-versa. The law was never in place as a mechanism for the forgiveness of sins. The law was in place to cleanse the temple to allow it to remain holy for Yahweh to continue to dwell amongst the Hebrews.

If we look through the OT, which is lengthy so I’m obviously not going to read the law here. But we’ll notice these links to sin offerings – these are listed as sacrificed for unintended sins. We see remuneration offerings for theft and the like. But these are not for the forgiveness of the trespasses. They’re simply for the cleansing of the sin for the holy state of things in Israel. What we have seen in OT law is actually more of a decontamination than a mitigation of sin.

There is a cost to the loss of Eden. There’s a cost to correcting the damage done by sin and mitigating that damage so we may restore Eden. The cost is illustrated through de-creation. It’s not that Yahweh is thirsty for blood. He has to keep the temple clean so that He may continue to dwell amongst us.

Let’s look at once specific passage in the Psalm reading to see what else is going on.

In Psalm 22 we read

Psalm 22:12–13 (NIV)

12 Many bulls surround me;

strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

13 Roaring lions that tear their prey

open their mouths wide against me.

The bulls of Bashan references back to the area of Bashan or the area of Mt Hermon that we’ve been speaking about for the last few weeks. These bulls were physically a thing. They were considered larger and stronger than the ordinary bull. But there is also a supernatural connection here. These bulls were connected to Ba’al and Ba’al worship. They were seen as a form of Icon for the fallen deity. This would have been known to David when he wrote this Psalm. There is a direct association with the underworld. In Ugaritic there’s actually a connection from the Bulls to the Serpent in the form of the adversary in Eden.

This Psalm is written in the 1st person. It would be Jesus, in the throes of his own crucifixion telling the reader that he could feel the powers of darkness closing in on him. Specifically, the powers of Satan and his army.

Jesus upon his Crucifixion took on the 3 major falls from Grace that plagued humanity and the supernatural world. The first was Genesis 3, our fall in the Garden. What we’re told from scripture is that when we fell, death entered the world.

Genesis 3:19 (NIV)

19 By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

How could one possibly unring the bell of death. Well, we needed a death and then a resurrection. Resurrection is the only way to recover from death. The next two falls were actually repaired after Jesus’ death by the introduction of the Holy Spirit.

The third fall was the tower of Bab’el and this was the ramifications of that sin.

Genesis 11:9 (NIV)

9 That is why it was called Babel (this is similar to the Hebrew word for confused) (this may be an elohim of confusion?)—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The Holy Spirit fixed that upon Jesus’ death at the feast of Pentecost.

Acts 2:5–6 (NIV)

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, (the sound of the HS) a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.

The fix to the second fall was the introduction of evil spirits that Yahweh was trying to fix with the flood of Noah.

Genesis 6:1–3 (NIV)

Wickedness in the World

6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

In English we may not see the connection here. But the Hebrew explains that the evil in humanity, was, at least as heavily influenced by these Nephilim as we had been by the evil elohim. Jesus actually fixes this during his lifetime. If we remember from the last few weeks. The Nephilim have been killed. They exist now as evil spirits roaming the earth. What we often call demons.

Matthew 10:1 (NIV)

10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

Jesus gave his disciples the power over evil spirits. We receive this gift by the power of the HS. This is the culmination of the undoing of the 3 falls.

We’re now immortal again, if we choose to follow Jesus. Our language, culture and civilization is unified again, if we choose to follow Jesus. And we have the ability to discern and cast out evil spirits, if we follow Jesus.

There’s a theme here – If we follow Jesus. Jesus is the only way. He’s the only one to conquer the powers of evil and he’s the only one to leave us his power, by way of the Holy Spirit.

None of the other offered options for religious satisfaction can make such a boast. And it’s likely that other earthly spiritual influences are either under the control of the wicked elohim or are in fact wicked elohim themselves. That’s why Jesus and his crucifixion and resurrection were so important.

Since creation, humanity has always had options for supernatural worship. But without Yahweh, these options have fallen short. Jesus is the only one to step into the void left in our relationship, brought about by both humanity and evil spirits.

What he was doing was more than just taking on sin for us. It was more than just turning us back to Yahweh, although it was those things too. Jesus was unmaking the human and supernatural falls from grace. I have no idea how this affected the supernatural world or the state of the fallen elohim. I do know that their influence of evil is still with us today. But Jesus is the way forward. Jesus is the only supernatural creator in human history that boasts the ability to repair the fundamental nature of human sin, by remaking our falls from grace. He repaired the deficiencies in humanity and in the supernatural kingdom, so that we might be in a position to return to the family of Yahweh. It is by him alone that we are remade in the image of Yahweh.

Resurrection was the only was to reverse death. Power over unclean spirits, through Jesus, is the only way to combat their evil influence on us. And unity behind the force of Jesus is the only way to combat the separation that humanity suffered as a result of the fall at Babel.

Jesus fixed all our problems. Now it’s up to us to bring his message to the world not yet saved by his efforts.