Episode 75: Mark part 20–The Hidden Lamp

What’s the deal with the lamp on the lampstand? What hidden message is Yeshua/Jesus revealing about Himself and His mission–and not only that, what is He telling us about how He reveals truth to His disciples?

Transcript below

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²¹ And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?  ²² For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. ²³ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” ²⁴ And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. ²⁵ For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

Not many verses today but they are chock full of meaning. And we are going to talk about imminent eschatology, the belief that Yeshua is coming any time now and if we believe it (which I do not) how it should show up in our actions according to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians and, well, just based on simple decency and love.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. You cannot, however, just decide that Hellmann’s Mayonnaise isn’t the devil’s condiment. Look, it’s even in the title! (I am laughing, okay?) A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.

Now, first I want to go somewhere that might be a bit unexpected, and that is back to the second Servant Song in Isaiah 42:1-9

Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.  Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”

The Servant is given, as a Covenant for the people and as a light to the nations—to do what? To open the eyes that are blind. To release people from captivity. To bring those who are in darkness into the light.

How did Yeshua describe Himself in John 8:12? “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”” This is the function of the Servant, to take those in darkness and release them from it, into the light. The Servant is not only a teacher but also a remover of blindness and a bringer of light and that is the context from which I want to teach today’s verses. And this is something new to me. One of my commentaries pointed this out and it was like a huge, “Oh duh” moment for me. I just love this.

²¹ And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? 

Who is them? We can assume that this is an extension of the more intimate setting of Yeshua teaching the Twelve plus those from the crowd who were deemed insiders, those who accepted His teachings and were legitimately His followers but who were not counted among the Twelve. Because, you know, there are insiders and then there are insider insiders, right? We’re just all glad to even be counted as insiders, right? But being an insider meant that, once the crowds were gone, you got special attention and instruction. You weren’t there for the entertainment value, or the healings and miracles. You were there because of the Man and His message and because you saw that He was a Prophet and yet, maybe more than a prophet. Maybe the Messiah? Maybe. But there is something about Him and His message that is drawing you in and you are intrigued at this person—what He says and who He will associate with and how he even touches lepers even though He isn’t a priest. He’s unlike anyone you have ever seen before and although that is offensive to some of your friends, family, and neighbors, you find yourself drawn to Him. You don’t just want the goodies. You want more. You want to hear more. You want more of Him.

So to these people who are taking chances with their reputations and sticking close, who are not falling in line with the Jerusalem Scribes and are ignoring the concerns of His own family, Yeshua continues on from the Parable of the Sower to share even more. They heard about growth in the Kingdom, how receiving the Word of God from this man would determine their fruitfulness for God. Not their wealth. Not their education. Not their family standing. Not their profession. But how they receive what He was saying. It was the most egalitarian thing they had ever heard—in fact, it was the only egalitarian thing they had probably ever heard.

Egalitarianism: Egalitarianism, or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status

Make no mistake, this was not how honor/shame societies worked. People knew their place. They knew what they could aspire to, within limits, and knew what they could never aspire to. But Yeshua here is preaching a system where it is their receptiveness to God through Yeshua’s teaching of the Word that determined how far they could go with God. They didn’t have to be Levites or Priests or rich or well-respected. Goodness, this man has gathered around him a bunch of fishermen and a tax collector, even. He eats with outcasts. And he tells them all the same message. And He doesn’t pander to the political or social elites.

“Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?”

The picture here would have been a familiar one. The small, handheld lychnos placed underneath a two-gallon measuring basket. Or under a bed, which would actually be a dangerous proposition as they didn’t have beds like ours that could conceivably have a small handheld lamp underneath without catching on fire. No, the lamp under the basket provides no light and was a waste of perfectly good oil, and the lamp under the bed was worse than useless, it is potentially destructive and outright careless. This actually reads like one of the Proverbs, right? Let’s look at a proverb out of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, 41:14–

My children, do as I teach you and live at peace. Wisdom that is not expressed is like a treasure that has been hidden—both are useless.

This was written about two hundred years earlier than Yeshua but expresses a similar concept. This is wisdom literature, expressing important maxims, or sayings, in a memorable way. I call them the “no duhs” of literature because you hear it and it is impossible to argue with the simple wisdom of what is being expressed. Well, of course, wisdom hidden is useless and of course, you shouldn’t put a lamp under a basket or a bed. However, Yeshua isn’t just expressing a maxim here, this is actually a parable.

²² For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. ²³ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 

Nothing is hidden, krypto (from which we get the word cryptic), which will not be made manifest, phanerote (fa-ner-oh-tay a word meaning “to be visible”); nor is anything secret, apokryphon (hidden or concealed) except to come to light, phaneron (meaning open to view). Phanerote and phaneron are very closely related and obviously this is a parallelism—just saying the same exact thing twice in slightly different ways.

Nothing is obscured that will not be made clear at some point in the future. Nor is anything an absolute secret that won’t be revealed later. Just like last week, we aren’t talking about your classic Greco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern mystery cults where everything has to remain a secret, and hence why we know almost nothing about Mithraism and why so many unsupported legends have sprung up about it. This is not that. Nothing that is confusing or obscured now in Yeshua’s ministry, like His exact identity or what His future plans are, will be obscured or confusing at some point in the future. All will be revealed. And we get a huge hint in the wording of this. And this is what I was just recently reading about that absolutely blew my mind and it’s amazing what we don’t see that’s just obviously right there.

Yeshua is talking about a light here. I gave you a hint with John 8:12. What is this hidden light that will be made manifest when placed on a “stand?” It’s Him. Yeshua is the light of the world and He will be placed upon the Cross for everyone to see. Everyone will see His death because everyone is at Passover. When He died the light was taken from the world and it went dark but the darkness, like His death, was short-lived. People would stay for the week and so they would hear of His resurrection. If they didn’t hear it then, then they would hear it because of the ruckus at Pentecost/Shavuot on the Temple Mount when one hundred and twenty believers were filled with the Spirit of God just like what happened with the elders around Mt Sinai.

Then, who Yeshua was and what He was doing and His mission and God’s secret work in Him to overthrow the powers of darkness which had the entire world in bondage—all of that would be made manifest. No secrets. All would be revealed. It was only a secret for a time and for very specific reasons. (1) He had to preach the message of the Kingdom unhindered by people’s messianic expectations, (2) He had to avoid the Herodian entanglements that would have erupted if there was another King roaming around and gaining popularity, (3) He had to fly under the radar of Rome because they were always watchful for potential rebellions and were brutal in crushing anything that even looked like one, (4) Satan could not know the real plan or he would never have allowed Yeshua to be crucified, thus dealing a death blow to his unfettered dominance over the world and it’s powers. This wasn’t a game, this was the most brilliantly crafted battle plan in the history of the world. But once the trap had been sprung and the battle won, there was no more need for being cryptic and secretive. All would be revealed. Yeshua was not launching a mystery cult, but a worldwide exodus out of one kingdom and into God’s Kingdom, and these parables we are talking about two weeks ago, this week and next week—they are Kingdom parables that show us how we relate to the Kingdom, how the Kingdom is and isn’t hidden and revealed, and how the Kingdom itself grows. Mysteries, yes, but only for a season. All will be revealed in shocking and terrible and wonderful and enduring ways. This isn’t an elite club based on the apprehension of esoteric knowledge like the Gnostics and modern cults like Mormonism where there are things that are held back until you are one of them and worthy, this is a mystery made plain to the entire world.

²³ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Again, this is a general summons and challenge. They are obviously there and interested, and are challenged to hear and go deeper. This is reinforced by the next verse:

²⁴ And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. 

And not only hear, pay close attention to what you are hearing! Again, this is spoken to the Twelve plus the others who have remained after the regular crowds are gone. “…with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.” This is a very common sort of wisdom literature saying and we see such sayings throughout Rabbinic literature as well because it is just good common sense. The effort you put in will be reflected in the result. How hard you work will go a long way toward determining your success. If you listen more you will hear more. He who sows sparingly will gather sparingly.

Practically, he who trusts God very little will change very little. He who listens to the Messiah only a little will gain very little understanding of the inbreaking Kingdom. It’s all about investment and these people were taking a social risk—which God rewards when done for the right reasons. This isn’t a particularly shocking observation and must not be mistaken for prosperity Gospel because we will often give God one thing and He will reward us with another—and oftentimes our rewards are not physical or tangible but solely internal in nature.  Someone might give away their life savings and be freed from a terrible burden, and they might never get the money back but they have found freedom and growth, which are far more important. Taking this back to the Parable of the Sower, we have the different types of soil but year after year that soil needs to be resown and reploughed. We don’t listen to God once. We don’t trust God once, on and done, and call it good. This relationship is an ongoing and never-ending investment and an endurance race. If we measure out our devotion to God sparingly, we will have limited results in the growth of good fruit. If we rarely trust Him, He won’t be able to prove to us how trustworthy He is and, again, we will grow very little and what we do grow might be very bad indeed.

²⁵ For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

This is really important because these people lived in this reality, but Yeshua is applying it to an alternate reality. Rich people are always getting more, and from whom? The poor! That’s how it worked in the Roman Empire and the Jewish population was not exempted from it. And the poor who had very little, even what they had was being cruelly and mercilessly being taken away from them by the rich and powerful. Think they paid fewer taxes? Pfft. Think again! The rich were taxed out of their excess, but the poor were taxed out of what was needed to fill their bellies. Small family farmers were losing their property right and left as they struggled under the heavy Roman taxes on produce in addition to the tithes they were also required to pay. The Pharisees looked down on them and their improper tithing but these people were often near starvation and even when they were landowners. What would we say today? Some people have all the luck! But Yeshua took this real-world principle and turned it upside down. “Are you sitting here listening to me? You will receive more and more revelation! For those who have rejected me? What share they had in revelation and the world to come will be stripped from them! You will be the truly wealthy ones in terms of the economy of the Kingdom and they will be impoverished. You will sit with Abraham and the Patriarchs and they will be outside where there is nothing but weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Of course, I borrow a bit from other teachings but you get the drift. The economy of the Kingdom is not monetary and money does not determine true wealth in the Kingdom. What kind of relationship do you have with God? If you seek after Him and wait on Him and follow after Him, more will be given you but if you refuse, if you think what you have now is good enough and enjoy the world too much to risk being asked to give any of it up, even what you think you have will be taken from you.

You see, if the Kingdom wasn’t different from the world, it would be filled with all the same old same old. The rich, athletic, beautiful, talented, educated people on the top and the poor, disabled, unattractive, clumsy, uneducated people on the bottom—and yes some of those terms are ugly but so are the attitudes behind them. So is the social ranking we assign to them. But that’s this world and it would be a lie to deny it. The Kingdom is and should be different. That we haul those worldly values into our Kingdom-ish gatherings is tragic. That we still judge people by how much money they can donate to the ministry and be sure not to alienate them, that we want the good singers entertaining us, etc.. instead of focusing on the things that matter. Namely—a person’s works and their devotion to God and to others. If this were the pure Kingdom, that is what we would exalt over worldly concerns. I mean, we’d all love to have rich benefactors, but only if they didn’t meddle and interfere! But the Kingdom’s currency is not the same as ours. It isn’t even something we can imagine, probably, how different it will be.

Okay, enough of that. Now I want to talk about eschatology because I see a lot of it out there right now, last week of June when I am writing this. People are saying, “Any day now,” and making predictions because things are a bit unpleasant in America and we tend to have no perspective because our lives here are so insanely easy and posh compared to the rest of the world. A ruckus happens and we are thinking it is the end. Want a ruckus? Try Tiananmen Square or living as a believer in certain areas of the Middle East or Africa. Try being an untouchable in India. Put riots and toppled statues into perspective. If Yeshua hasn’t come to rescue His people in places where they are actually being burned in churches, I doubt He bats an eyelash over our hoarding-induced toilet paper shortages. Truly, we have it easier than any believers at any time in history. We don’t need to be rescued, we need to be Gibbs-slapped.

I was reading Richard B Hays’ book The Moral Vision of the New Testament last night, just started it actually because I finished the Wilberforce book and this one was recommended in another book I am reading by Boyd which I am not ready to recommend yet being that I am only 400 pages into 1200. Anyway, Hays brought up something interesting about the difference between how the believers in Thessalonica and Corinth were handing what they believed was our Savior’s very soon return. And, might I add that every generation has believed very fervently that their generation was “the one” and could prove it from Scripture so we have to put all our Scriptural wrangling into the context of everyone so far being wrong and many of them being very much smarter than we are.

A bit of background, Paul had a rough time of it in Thessalonica. Although they listened intently to him for three weeks in the synagogue and a lot of converts were made, a few leaders made some serious trouble, resulting in the arrest of Paul and Silas and they’re having to leave town. That being said, their visit yielded amazing fruit because those who accepted the Gospel of Yeshua were like, just on fire for God in every way. They were generous and full of good works. They believed in Yeshua’s return and were working diligently in light of that belief. But Paul didn’t have any idea what the results of his ministry trip were and at one point, he sent Timothy to go and learn, and evidently, Timothy’s report was beyond Paul’s wildest dreams. Rarely do we see such a glowing report of a local congregation and their progress despite initially having very little time with Paul and Silas. Paul even notes that they do not have to be taught how to love one another because God has obviously taught them Himself. So, these guys have an eschatological belief in the return of Yeshua and it has spurred them on to good works and love and generosity and zealousness. They are the gold standard.

On the other hand, we have Corinth, the problem child of the Bible.  The Corinthians committed sins that would make the most hardened Centurion blush with shame. Father and son sleeping with the same woman. Seriously? What is this—Jerry Springer? And that’s just the gross stuff, they are also unloving and petty in the extreme. Now Corinth, a bit of historical background here, Greek Corinth was destroyed in the 146 BCE by the Romans who rebuilt it as a Roman colony in 44 BCE. It was populated largely by retired soldiers and their families. It was not a Jewish outpost nor was it a Greek city. It was as Roman as Rome itself. So these people had Roman values and Roman gods and participated in the Imperial cult and the games and the gladiators and all that stuff. It was their culture. Paul comes in after he visited Thessalonica and Athens, and it is in Corinth that he meets Priscilla and Aquilla and stayed there for eighteen months.

It is evident from Paul’s first letter (actually his second, at least) that he was of the belief that Yeshua would return fairly soon, let’s look at chapter 7:

²⁹ This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, 30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, 31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

But the Corinthians were not reacting to the news that same way that the Thessalonians did—instead of engaging zealously in good works and brotherly love, they were living it up and just flat out being nasty. Some of them were wanting to forgo the responsibilities of family and marriage and just give up on life but Paul was warning them against that line of thinking. No, it is precisely because of the return that we must go on laboring, and living, and loving one another. Certainly, Paul’s beliefs about the soon return of our Lord didn’t keep him from traveling and preaching the Gospel, quite the contrary! He always behaved as though there was no time to lose and that is also how we must behave.  I have to admit that I have been shocked at what I see out there every time some sort of unpleasantness occurs, whether big or small. People start date setting and guaranteeing that they are hearing from the Lord that the time is soon only to be wrong again and again but that isn’t even the most disturbing part. The most disturbing part is that they aren’t doing anything about the lost, the poor, the suffering, and the vulnerable.

But if you hold off today on alleviating oppression and righting wrongs because you feel the end is near then your faith has been rendered a useless and self-serving expression of nothingness. As long as we have breath in our bodies, we must endure and fight for what is right and against what is wrong or all we can truly be said to believe in is taking the easy way out, for the benefit of none but ourselves. I cannot think of a sorrier or more misrepresentative reflection of the revealed character of God in Christ among the modern congregations of Messiah than to just sit around on our hands waiting for rescue (from what? from nothing compared to the nightmare of what others endure daily) while others are truly suffering right this minute. And they will be suffering tomorrow too. And next week. And next month. And next year.

And beyond that, anyone who truly believes the return is imminent and is not out there desperately trying to reach the lost is, at best, selfish and unloving and perhaps, at worst, damned themselves and hoping in a salvation they will be unable to attain because their hearts were never changed from their original beastly nature despite all their religious trappings and posturing. This is why we are a powerless people; we are more concerned with who is keeping the right Sabbath and celebrating the right holidays, eating the right foods, and giving assent to the right doctrines than we are with who needs the message of the Kingdom. Lives are at stake and folks are just comparatively biding time and debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If your imminent eschatology doesn’t spur you to act on behalf of those who need Yeshua/Jesus in the here and now, then you have serious heart issues that you need God to fix. Because it isn’t okay. I once heard the talking half of Penn and Teller talking about why he is an atheist and his reason made perfect sense. He stated that Christians obviously don’t really believe what they say they believe because if they believed it, they would be desperate to reach people. But they don’t. I suppose the problem is that we might believe it but we are, in fact, very self-centered. We don’t love others in a self-sacrificing way. We don’t go out because it makes us uncomfortable. We worship our comfort level.

While people die and people suffer, and people are subjected to terrible oppression–we think only of our comfort. Honestly, sometimes I wonder what it is we actually do believe in. Ourselves, maybe?

Will He return to find us occupying and doing His works or will He return to find us biding time and waiting it out instead?

I said before that I finally finished that Wilberforce book by Eric Metaxas the other night, called Amazing Grace and released at the same time and in conjunction with the making of the movie of the same name about his life’s work of ending oppression. Most famously, of course, he was God’s tool to end the slave trade not only in England and its colonies but also in Russia and Europe. He also started the forerunner of the RSPCA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ended animal baiting, public executions, the public autopsies of their bodies for entertainment, and child brothels in neighborhoods. Believe me, Victorian England was really more like Wilberforcian England because he set the standards that her reign has been given public credit for. His good works were endless despite his always being somewhat ill and barely able to see well enough to read. He gave away fortunes and died a pauper, living with his sons in the ministry. He believed that Yeshua, who he of course called Jesus, was returning and was determined to do what He could to make the world right in any way that he could. But he never said, “Good enough.” He was constantly witnessing the Gospel to people. He wrote a book on his own religious thoughts in the late 18^th century when no one famous was doing such things. He occupied earth on behalf of the Kingdom and never rested. His faith took him from being a young, brash, unbelieving junior MP (Member of Parliament) in the House of Commons to become the conscience of the world. He campaigned for kindness and civility and brotherly love to all and he never resorted to worldly tactics. When he battled slavers, he didn’t insult them or demean them in any way—even when he got death threats. Even when the press turned against him and poets lampooned him. He never went back to the old worldly verbal tactics that is was so good at. He treated everyone with the dignity that he insisted they deserved just by nature of being humans. What he demanded for the slave, he did not withhold from the slaver. He was remarkable. And he never felt as though he had done enough.

If we had ten of him the world would be turned upside down but right now, I would settle for just one. And yet, there should be at least a bit of Wilberforce in all of us. We ought to all love people enough so as to have zero tolerance for oppression. I wonder what is wrong with us that we don’t riot and revolt en masse to get child sex workers off the streets. Their pimps couldn’t shoot all of us. Heck, Gandhi got people to be willing to risk being shot just to gain access to salt. What’s wrong with us? This stuff exists because we allow it and because we are too divided over doctrines to care about human misery. If the church united worldwide there are enough of us that no one could hurt anyone in most of the world.

Maybe the seed is falling onto soil that we don’t bother to plow, eh? Are we ignoring the hurt out there? Is it too scary, too inconvenient, too costly, and too risky? Are we really afraid of dying? Should we be afraid of dying or should we be scared of what we will tolerate in order to survive? We are not powerless because the government keeps us powerless; we are powerless because we have chosen the easy path of infighting and posturing and comfort and turning a blind eye. That makes us the oppressors, I imagine. Maybe that’s why what we think we have is being taken from us, eh? We think we have freedom and rights but as long as we don’t fight for the freedom and rights of others, they are empty things.

Next week we have our final two parables in this teaching series—the parable of the wheat and the parable of the mustard seed.