WEBVTT

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When, as an ancient historian,
I look at the evidence about Jesus and

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say, what did he think he was doing,
I am putting him alongside other figures

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in the world of first century Judaism,
who we have some evidence for.

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And the first thing that I say,
quite clearly, is that Jesus thought he

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was a prophet.

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He spoke of himself as a prophet.

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When other people referred to him as a
prophet, he didn't say, no, no,

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you're wrong.

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So that's the historical starting point.

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The second thing is, what sort of a
prophetic movement was this?

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What did he think he was doing as a
prophet?

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And the answer is quite clear again.

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He thought he was a prophet announcing the
kingdom of God.

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Not just announcing it in the sense that
it might happen in a day or a week or a

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year, but saying, it's happening now under
your noses.

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This was his prophetic message and he not
only said it, he did it with the symbolic

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actions of healing and feasting and so on.

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And that's why he got into trouble,
because people didn't like it.

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Now, the next thing in line from there is
that not only was he announcing the

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kingdom of God, by bringing it himself,
he seems to think he was not just a

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prophet announcing it, he was actually the
Messiah.

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That is to say, not he was the divine
incarnate one, we'll get to that,

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that's the fifth stage, but that he was
the one who was Israel's anointed,

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who was the Lord's anointed, he was the
king.

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And messiahs, there were always two things
that messiahs had to do.

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Messiahs had to defeat the pagans and
build or cleanse the temple.

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And Jesus was going to fight a different
sort of battle.

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He talks about having battles with the
enemy, but it isn't Rome he has in mind,

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it's the darker force of evil that he
called the Satan or the accuser,

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the ultimate source of evil.

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And he wasn't going to build a new temple.

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He was going to do and be things which
would, as it were, replace the temple.

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We'll get to that in a moment.

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So he's a prophet, he's announcing the
kingdom, he believes he is the Messiah.

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But then fourthly, Jesus believed that his
messianic movement was not about blitzing

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the enemy into submission in a political
sense, but by actually taking the full

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force of evil onto himself and dying under
the weight of that evil in fulfilment of

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the scriptures.

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The long story of Israel's tortured career
was going to come to its climax in his own

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death at the hands of the pagans.

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And then fifthly and finally, and this is
the really scary thing when we think about

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it historically, Jesus as a historical
individual believing this, he believed

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that this entire vocation was appropriate
for him because he was actually the

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personal embodiment of Israel's God.

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He told stories about Israel's God coming
back to Zion in order to explain what he

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was doing in his own last journey to
Jerusalem.

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And that's the way that I come round to
saying that Jesus actually...

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You see, if you say, did Jesus believe he
was God?

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People in our culture have this idea of
God as a rather distant dictator or

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whatever.

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And if you say Jesus believed he was that
sort of figure, you have this idea of a

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rather lofty detached Jesus, like the
Jesus of some of the movies from the 50s

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and so on, with a far away look in his eye
and being very sort of, I don't know,

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heady.

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Jesus has his feet on the ground of first
century Palestine.

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And as a human being with this vocation,
he believed he was embodying the personal

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presence of Israel's God.

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And then you get a very different picture
of God.

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You get a God who doesn't stay detached
from the process.

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You get a God who comes and gets his feet
dirty and gets his hands nailed to a cross

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in order to rescue his people.