The disciples aren’t too thrilled with someone homing in on what they mistakenly believe to be “their territory.” What Yeshua/Jesus has to say to them for getting in the way of another person’s good works should cause us all to pause and reflect on our own priorities and issues.
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38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 For the one who is not against us is for us. 41 For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward. 42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Last week, we covered the second Passion Prediction and so, this week we have to hear the second part of their embarrassing response. The group of them are still rooted and grounded in the wrong kind of kingdom dynamics—despite being able to cast out demons (usually), heal the sick and preach the Gospel. They have the best teacher in the world but they are still ambitious in the extreme. They want power and position and honor and they are even jockeying for position as to who will replace Yeshua/Jesus when He dies. Yeah, they did that. The color drained out of my face the first time I realized it. But Yeshua tells them, and not for the last time, that God’s Kingdom is made up of people who are of no reputation—they are like the little children who were considered to be nothing more than the property of their parents and would probably die before they get interesting and were therefore irrelevant. But worse, they were told to be servants of children—a job for slaves and, horror of horrors, women. Oh, the humanity! Surely this will shut them up and they will be too embarrassed to say anything else…
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. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I introduce them Bible context in a way that teaches them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com. Let’s review the lead-in again from last week before moving on, and this is from the Expanded TDR version of the Bible, which is not authoritative:
“And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “Guys, If anyone really wants to be my replacement, he’s going to have to be the one doing all the dirty work on behalf of the people you all have been taught to write off.” And as he took a child and put him in the midst of them, the disciples looked on with horror. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever accepts and serves one such child in my name (you know, like a slave or a woman has to but you were raised to believe was beneath you—and don’t even get me going about what I expect you to do on behalf of Gentiles) accepts and serves me, and whoever accepts and serves me, accepts and serves not me but Yahweh who sent me. And the disciples were horrified and tried to redeem the situation another way because this was just not reasonable.”
I have mentioned this before but after each Passion prediction, one of the three core disciples says something to make it abundantly clear that none of them understand the writing on the wall; that their Kingdom understanding is dead wrong and they are inherently wanting to serve the wrong kind of kingdom—and before we are too hard on them, we are all raised this way. We love hierarchies. We love status. We are ambitious. We love the safety and security and feelings of power that spring from the violence that Constantine injected into the Church—so much so that we hate to read the Sermon on the Mount without pausing every few minutes to say, “But He obviously didn’t mean that because that isn’t reasonable and could get us hurt…” But the Kingdom came as a child and was inaugurated by an act of extreme self-sacrifice ushered in through an injustice. The disciples were going to learn the hard way that He meant every word of it and it was going to cost them their lives and all their ambitions if they were going to serve Him. For one of them, it would prove too much to ask.
Anyway, Peter responded to the first Passion Prediction with a rebuke that Yeshua doesn’t know what He’s talking about and that a Messiah isn’t supposed to be killed—He’s supposed to conquer their enemies. I infer the second part, but as it springs naturally from the first, I suspect it is accurate even though a guess. This time, it is John and the next time it will be James and John who initiate the inappropriate questions. But their questions are in the Bible not to embarrass them but to serve as points of teaching and revelation. Without their questions, and if we don’t take the responses absolutely seriously, we will also serve the wrong kingdom in the name of Yahweh’s Kingdom. They are in no way compatible. We have to accept it even though we were all born to hate and fear living under the Kingdom of Heaven. To call it counter-cultural is like the understatement of all time.
938 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”
So, not only are they jockeying for position to determine who will take Yeshua’s place as lead teacher (after all, they can work the miracles too and he’s just a man same as them, right?) but now they are talking about disallowing anyone to cast out demons who isn’t following “us”—plural—meaning that they are actually believing that they themselves are worthy of being followed. And more than that, John is actually implying that the rest of the disciples who aren’t included in the Twelve (because we are aware of a large group of at least seventy men and women who are followers at this point) are following them, collectively, and not just following Yeshua. So, this week’s vocabulary word is chutzpah, and it is a Yiddish word meaning the quality of extreme self-confidence or audacity, for good or for bad..It derives from the Hebrew word חֻצְפָּה, meaning “insolence”, “cheek” or “audacity”. That’s the Wikipedia definition combined with a few others just to really give the full flavor of what they are doing here. They have confused the glory, honor and authority of Yeshua with their own. And notice that John is back to calling Him Teacher again, this is the second downgrade from Messiah—Peter was responsible for the last one when he called Him Rabbi at the Transfiguration. And this is the only time this John (as opposed to John the Baptist) is ever mentioned alone in the Synoptic Gospels by name. Not exactly a banner moment.
But let’s look at the situation here, apart from the chutzpah. At some point, when they weren’t with Him—when John and some others in particular were not with Yeshua—they came across a fellow who was casting out demons through the authority of Yeshua. Meaning that he was recognizing that through invoking the authority of Yeshua, demons would leave people and he was out on a mission to do so. And evidently he was successful, which is a good thing for the Kingdom and a bad thing for the Strong Man, who has been bound and this guy is looting him, just as Yeshua said would happen. So, they see him and tell him to stop but the text says they “tried” to stop him so evidently it wasn’t working. The guy wouldn’t stop doing what was right. What’s the problem? Evidently he didn’t have the correct group designation—he wasn’t one of them or following them or bringing them any glory through association or whatever. Let’s call it what it is—this guy was from the wrong denomination and so had to be stopped from doing the work that Yeshua came to do, namely, rescuing His people from the oppression of the Kingdom of Satan. You see, evidently, you are only allowed to do that if you are “one of us.” And how common is this mindset? How many times have we seen it or even said it or at least thought it ourselves? Sideline here, a shameful one. When God had me start praying for the Chinese people years ago, and they need prayer desperately because communism is a great oppressor and so is animism and shamanism and Bon and some forms of Buddhism are violent, and communistic atheism is brutal. Anyway, when He had me start praying for them, I did it via this book that taught me all about the over 500 people groups that make up what we outsiders call the “Chinese people.” But they aren’t all Chinese! There are more languages and tribes than you can imagine. And I remember reading, very early on, and praying for groups and this book I used (which I will link in the transcript) was talking about Catholic missions to the Chinese, and I was shamefully disappointed that they were converting the people of China instead of Protestants and I will tell you that I got such a rebuke from the Spirit on that one. Boy Howdy, big wakeup call for me. Because it was the same thing as the disciples with this guy casting out demons, these Catholic brothers and sisters—a lot of them gave their lives on behalf of the Chinese people, to bring them out of idolatry and into the love of Christ. They were doing good. They were loving these people. Just because I am not a Catholic doesn’t mean that I get to tell them not to do good works among the Chinese. I was rightly ashamed of myself. Now, I thank God for their efforts in the world to help people. This brings me to Yeshua’s response:
39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.
We cannot tell people not to do mighty works in His Name. We don’t have that right. When we do it, we are saying, “They aren’t following us. They aren’t following Yeshua in the way we believe is perfect.” But the problem is that someone else can look at how we do things and rightly point out issues because we are all wrong in this or that way, and they can tell us not to do good works and be on equally solid Scriptural ground—that is, unsound ground. We are all on sinking sands when we forbid good works in His Name. Best we combine forces, as the various underground groups in China finally did, to unite under the banner of Messiah and glorify Him and preach the Gospel and realize, as Dallas Willard likes to say, even in our differences, we are still like—meaning we have more important things in common than in disagreement. Believe it or not, and I am shamed that I even have to say this, it is better for a person to be a Catholic and to come to faith than to be steeped in polytheism. And to you Catholics that might be listening, it is better for a person to be a Protestant than to be steeped in paganism, okay? The purpose of our lives is to serve people and bring them to the Messiah—not to make sure they are “following us.”
And speaking of following us, Yeshua says something that is a huge correction here, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” Like, hey guys, this has nothing to do with you. This is about ME! Just as their view of the Kingdom is too narrow in demanding that this guy be a part of their super-secret cool kid club, their view of themselves is overly inflated. They are still just followers, even if they are the first and the inner circle. They are still followers, not the followed. They need to get their focus back where it belongs and, if they do that, they will see this guy was doing what was right to do. He was doing the work of the Kingdom. This guy, whoever he is, may not be a total insider but he certainly isn’t an outsider. He has recognized the unique authority of Yeshua to do this. He believes. He is fighting the right enemy and so being divisive with him is contrary to the message of the Kingdom. He is clearly opposed to the kingdom of Satan. He isn’t the enemy but by not seeking peace with him, it is they who are at odds with the Kingdom of Heaven.
40 For the one who is not against us is for us.
So, Yeshua is including this man under the umbrella of those doing His will and serving the Kingdom. But now He is being very deliberate by returning to the “us” language. The disciples used “us” in a divisive, exclusivist way but Yeshua uses it in an inclusive way. This is absolutely a commandment to consider this man as an insider and not an outsider. We actually see something very similar to this when Yahweh takes some of the Spirit that rests upon Moses and gives it to the seventy elders of Israel and Joshua gets jealous for Moses’s sake in Num 11.
26 Now two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. 27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 And Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, “My lord Moses, stop them.” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”
Anyone who truly has the best interests of the Kingdom at heart will not dissuade anyone from doing mighty works in the Name of Yeshua or Jesus or Yesu or whatever Name they use in their country because—as in the case with Moses—the harvest is great but the workers, the people who actually do the work, are very few. Moses couldn’t carry the weight of the job of ruling over Israel in the wilderness and none of our denominations, or religious cliques, can support the weight of the worldwide need for the Gospel of the Savior. All hands on deck, people, or shut your mouths. We’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. There is no room for jealousy in the Kingdom, just rejoicing when the work of salvation gets done and people are released from under the oppression of Satan and into eternal life.
41 For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.
Here’s where we uncover their hypocrisy. They’ve been out and about ministering and receiving hospitality from these “not following us” people but they can’t accept hospitality from outside the group and then cut them off from doing the larger work of the Kingdom. In Yeshua’s way of thinking, there is no difference between the people who fed and housed them while they were on the road than this guy casting out demons. If they are going to accept the former then they have no right to decline the latter and that goes for all of us. We can’t use people when it is convenient to our ministry work and then jealously guard against them stepping on “our” turf. Because it isn’t our turf. It’s Yeshua’s turf and He calls who He calls and doesn’t see fit to ask us how we feel about it beforehand. Yeshua’s turf means there is no room for turf wars because turf wars take the focus away from getting the Gospel out to the ends of the earth as Yeshua promised it would be and until it is, He isn’t going to be returning—and why should He? Too many people groups have never heard of Him. If that doesn’t offend us then who are we to spend time deciding who gets to do His work? But here, in the next verse, is one of the most scathing rebukes, I think, in Scripture and it gets misinterpreted when removed from this context. Remember, Yeshua has a child in His arms but He hasn’t been talking about the child for a bit here:
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Who is the “little one” who believes in Him? Is He talking about the child in His arms? No, He is referring to the exorcist that they have been hampering. There is no reason to believe that the child Yeshua is holding believes in Him, but that exorcist sure did—enough to be running roughshod all over the enemy’s domain and looting his kingdom of demonically-oppressed victims. The disciples are still thinking in worldly terms of being an exclusively authorized club and Yeshua has to divest them of this extreme error before He is crucified. By trying to get this guy to stop performing deliverance on God’s people, they are causing him to sin—because to be able to do such great good and to instead withhold it is sin. Yeshua is telling them that they cannot refuse the right of others to minister in His Name and according to His authority and the works He does. Whoever this anonymous man is, He certainly has impressive faith. To stop his exercise of that faith is something that Yahweh will not tolerate and it would be better for them to have a millstone—one of the large ones that animals moved—hung around their neck and thrown into the Sea of Galilee right outside Capernaum. The word here for sin is skandalizo, from which we get the word scandalous. What they are doing is unthinkable and scandalous. There is no room for this in the Kingdom—the stakes are too high. We play a dangerous game when repeating this sort of chutzpah.
I might also mention the ancient “trial by water.” They do make fun of it in a lot of movies that I will not mention by name—the idea of throwing someone in deep water, fully clothed, and if they can swim to shore it means they were innocent of all charges because the gods vindicated them. Well, fully clothed would be bad enough, but weighed down by a millstone? Even worse. And yet Yeshua is telling them that even that would give them a better chance of vindication than what they are doing to people who aren’t “one of us.” Scary stuff.
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
Let’s talk about hyperbole for a minute. There are times when Yeshua is absolutely literal and times when He is not. “Turn the other cheek” and “pray for and bless your enemies?”—absolutely serious and literal. Cutting off body parts?—absolutely serious but not literal. I do want to talk about hell, Gehenna, and the unquenchable fire. There are three valleys associated with Jerusalem and if you look at the three of them, they form the Hebrew letter “shin”—the one to the north is the Kidron valley, the one down the middle is the Tyropoeon Valley (or cheesemaker’s valley) and the southern valley is the Valley of Hinnom or Gei Hinnom. During Second Temple days, this was a garbage pit and just everything imaginable was thrown into it from the city to be burned in order to keep Jerusalem holy. The fires burned full time and during this time, in extra-biblical writings, it was often used to refer to the fate of the wicked. That was the understanding, that those who were wicked would end up here and it would serve as a cautionary warning to sinners. In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Rosh Hashanah 16b-17a, we see this:
It has been taught: Beth Shammai say, There will be three groups at the Day of Judgment one of thoroughly righteous, one of thoroughly wicked, and one of intermediate. The thoroughly righteous will forthwith be inscribed definitively as entitled to everlasting life; the thoroughly wicked will forthwith be inscribed definitively as doomed to Gehinnom, as it says. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence. The intermediate will go down to Gehinnom (b.RH.17a) and squeal and rise again, as it says, And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name and I will answer them. Of them, too, Hannah said, The Lord killeth and maketh alive, he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up. Beth Hillel, however, say: He that abounds in grace inclines [the scales] towards grace, and of them David said, I love that the Lord should hear my voice and my supplication, and on their behalf David composed the whole of the passage, I was brought low and he saved me. Wrongdoers of Israel who sin with their body and wrongdoers of the Gentiles who sin with their body go down to Gehinnom and are punished there for twelve months. After twelve months their body is consumed and their soul is burnt and the wind scatters them under the soles of the feet of the righteous as it says, And ye shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be as ashes under the soles of your feet. But as for the minim and the informers and the scoffers, who rejected the Torah and denied the resurrection of the dead, and those who abandoned the ways of the community, and those who `spread their terror in the land of the living`, and who sinned and made the masses sin, like Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his fellows these will go down to Gehinnom and be punished there for all generations, as it says, And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have rebelled against me etc. Gehinnom will be consumed but they will not be consumed, as it says, and their form shall wear away the nether world... (retrieved from http://instonebrewer.com/RabbinicTraditions/)
But why the quick change of subject? Unless it wasn’t a change of subject at all? What have they been talking about since last week’s verses?—Ambition! Yeshua has not changed subjects.
45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.
The cutting off of the hand was a common practice against thieves and the cutting off of a foot was the punishment for runaway slaves. In the next verse, we see a reference to the eye being cut out—which I believe was a reference to their jealousy. Yeshua is talking about some very serious and deep-seated jealousy issues here. They cannot think that they have the right to take from others the opportunity to serve God’s Kingdom. There is zero room for that. They cannot shirk their positions in life as slaves of the entire world by running off in the direction of prestige and looking to be top dog. They can’t get that in this Kingdom. And they cannot be jealous of others called by Yahweh to do the work of the Kingdom in the authority of the Son. And they have committed all three of these sins because their hearts are still carnal, regardless of how much insider teaching they have been blessed to receive and despite the mighty works they have been given the privilege of performing. And we can go a bit easy on them because the Cross is still future, as is the New Creation which will overhaul and transform all except one of them.
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
So, what Yeshua is teaching here is communicating the concept of the judgment but it is a mistake to take this and make a doctrine out of it when the whole point of what He is saying is that the ways of the Kingdom cannot be served by what they are doing and wanting right now—that the ways of the world aren’t compatible. And more than that—they never will be compatible. Instead of literally cutting away body parts, Yeshua is calling them to lives of absolute denial of the ways the world gets ahead and does things, and a complete sacrifice of everything worldly that is causing them to view the incoming Kingdom as an opportunity for worldly promotion, worldly power, and worldly gains. The Kingdom came as a child and a lamb, not as a bloodthirsty conqueror and they have to follow the Lamb. They cannot depart from the pattern they have been shown and authorized to operate in. No matter how people want to interpret Revelation, while ignoring that Yeshua is referred to as the lamb, like, 28 times and the Lion only once, and goes into battle with the sword of His mouth and with His clothing drenched in blood before the battle, meaning that only His own blood is on His clothing—look it up, I am telling you the truth here. Yeshua is crashing their party of the kind of violent upheaval they hoped for in the example of the Hasmoneans—which ended in disaster and with the Roman occupation when the level of intra-Jewish violence became too much for even Rome to tolerate. And again, when the Jews tried it again under bar Kochba, God refused to give them the kind of victory they wanted, and the entire city was razed to the ground and remade as a fully realized Roman city.
They can’t afford to get this wrong. Yeshua is now tying a complete denial of ambition and division to following Him and obeying the ways of the Kingdom. Let’s look at the final few verses of the book of Isaiah:
20 And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. 21 And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord. 22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. 23 From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. 24 “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
We must conform ourselves to the otherworldly methods and ethics of the Kingdom. Otherwise, it is rebellion and what Isaiah and Yeshua are communicating to us is that instead of being greatest, we will end up on the trash heap of eternity.
49 For everyone will be salted with fire.
What does this mean? That everyone will be salted with fire? Salting was what was performed on whatever parts of the sacrifice were being burned. Everything that was burned had to be salted. I mean, either we will be sacrifices or trashed—as we are following this context trail. It’s one or the other. We aren’t literally going to be burned up if we make the right choice, so this is a concept of what will be disposed of—our worldly ways are going one way or another. Either as a sacrifice of our own choosing, leaving the rest of us that was conformed and dedicated to Yeshua and His Kingdom intact, or all of us, because nothing was fit for the Kingdom. That’s the hell concept here—will anything remain for the Kingdom?
So, if this exorcist was willing to be salted, leave him alone. He’s walking in the right direction—don’t turn him around. Once the crucifixion happens, this guy has some decisions to make but he cannot deny the power. But if the disciples stopped him and then Yeshua died, he’d be thankful that he hadn’t made the mistake of continuing to do works in His Name. You see how it goes? How easily we can become severe stumbling blocks and block the way into the Kingdom? As the Pharisees and scribes were accused of doing in Matt 23:4? Be one of us before you do ministry!
50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
I call this the “you worry about you” rebuke. And yet that is wrong because this is a communal saying. Have salt in yourselves—share salt. Benefit one another with your good fruit and your allegiance to me and your love for one another. Be at peace with one another! No more of this ambition and jockeying for position and arguing who is the greatest and trying to stop people from doing good works unless you approve of them and thinking that people should follow you instead of me. You guys aren’t worthy of being followed. Get it through your thick skulls! In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder actually mentions that the salt of the Dead Sea region had a particular flavor that could fade away—because of the “contamination” of the salt with gypsum, which gave it a very unique flavor. So, the disciples couldn’t just taste like regular salt to the world, they were called to a unique life and lifestyle. They would go through the fires because they would not look like anything the world had ever seen before. They wouldn’t kill anyone in the Name of their king and, in fact, they would all die for Him. They would preach non-retaliation and forgiveness, the blessing of their persecutors, absolute trust in Yahweh to work things out in His own way. Gone were the days of conquest—the Kingdom had renewed itself in the form of a child, and a crucified King who forgave His torturers, His betrayers, and His murderers.
That doesn’t taste like anything else the world had to offer. It was unique. It is still unique. A kingdom full of people called to take the lowest seat at the table—genuinely and not for show. A system where the least of these, those marginalized by Greco-Roman and first-century Jewish society, are the priority of all. Where we honor God by refusing to retaliate when shamed and opposed and persecuted. A kingdom whose weapons the enemy can’t do anything about—how does one deal with people who will not kill? How does the enemy win a war when the only victory is to get people to break God’s commandments when the people refuse to return sin for sin? No, I am not going to strike you back. No, I am not going to kill you to keep you from killing me. No, I am not going to fight the way the word fights. If you hurt me, I will bless you and pray for your salvation. I won’t hand you a bludgeon but I will forgive you for using one against me but I am not going to hit you back. You’re going to have to sin all by yourself, if I serve my Master correctly. You can’t touch me because I am not afraid to die, if I truly believe in the world to come and refuse to save my own life—as He warned them against after the Transfiguration.
Okay, so from next week’s lesson through the end of the Gospel, they will be in Judea. This wrapped up the Galilee ministry until after the Resurrection. On the way to Jerusalem, He will teach more shocking things that will upset their collective apple carts and he will be increasingly provoking the Judean leadership to kill Him. The gloves have officially come off.
