Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

The Herodians and the Pharisees have come at Jesus today trying to get him to slip up and either admit that he’s a fraud or commit blasphemy, and so far he’s astounded all with his doctrine.  Now the Sadducees come to him with their own “desert island” scenario trying to entangle Him. They ask about a woman who is married to a man who dies before having a child with her. In ancient Jewish culture, a widow without children will be married to her dead husband’s brother so that he can “raise up seed” for his brother. This used to seem abhorrent to me, but knowing that Jesus only cared for women tenderly, I’m trying to figure out how this rule would have protected the widows. Back then, women had almost no rights, and a widow would often be forced to beg in the streets or even resort to prostitution to support herself. By requiring the extended family to take accountability for the widow’s well being, he’s protecting her from ...

Sorry it’s been a while, my regular writing routine has been shaken up. The chief priests wanted Jesus to justify his answer in scripture, so he does with use of the word “image” was a citation to the second commandment, basically saying that this Roman coinage was a graven image which violated the Torah. The second scriptural citation that Jesus uses has to do with the “Shema,” which is a Jewish prayer based on Deuteronomy 6:4-8, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41. The article says that this “is the most important prayer a pious Jew can say… The Shema then commands a person to love God with his whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength.” It also points out that this prayer was the one that some Jews wrote down and then wore in boxes or little bags tied to their forehead. The article continues, “St. Matthew and St. Mark both recount Jesus quoting the Shema in the same chapter just a few verses after the Tribute Episode. This proximity f...

The second point come in Jesus’ answer, or rather his question back to the Pharisees and Herodians. He asks, “Whose image and superscription hath it?” He’s asking whose picture and motto is on the money that they handed him. If we follow the same logic of “whose name is on the church? Then that’s whose church it is,” we can deduce that if Caesar’s face and logo is on the money, then the money belongs to him. The article cited yesterday from lewrockwell.com says, “because the hostile question was a direct challenge to Jesus’ authority as a rabbi on a point of law, His interrogators would have expected a counter-question grounded in scripture, in particular, based upon the Torah. Two words, ‘image’ and ‘inscription,’ in the counter-question harkens to two central provisions in the Torah, the First (Second) Commandment and the Shema. These provide the scriptural basis for this question of law....

The chief priests definitely understand that Jesus is denouncing them, and they are not pleased about it. While Jesus continues to teach in the temple, the Pharisees have been making plans to trap Him. The Pharisees and Herodians approach Jesus together to ambush Him. First, let’s stop and consider the fact that the Pharisees and herodians are working together. An article discussing this incident on gotquestions.org reminds us, “The Herodians were a non-religious Jewish party who supported the dynasty of Herod and the general policy of the Roman government.” We know that the Pharisees were uber-strict observers of the Mosaic law and constantly made changes to and complicating it. It doesn’t make sense that the group of people who regard themselves as the most adherent followers of the Mosaic law would meet and plan together with a group of Herodians, who they considered traitors, as a group of Jews who supported Roman occupation. You know that the situa...

The parable of the wicked husbandmen looks really bad for the chief priests who are listening and plotting on Jesus. They can’t arrest him right then because the people believe him to be a prophet, and arresting someone perceived to be a man of God because he speaks out against your ungodliness is pretty telling to the crowd of people you’re supposed to lead. Using this time, Jesus continues with another parable, one that is very similar to a previous parable from Luke, which we will compare and contrast later, because it’s quite profitable. In this parable, Jesus tells of “a certain kind, which made a marriage for his son.” Apparently, during the time of Christ, marriage was mostly arranged by parents, so a father arranging a marriage for his son was not unusual. Another point is that during this time an invitation from a king was more like a command then a request. Once the marriage banquet was ready, the king “sent forth his servants to call them ...

From the parable of the two sons, Jesus continues with another parable about “a certain man” who planted a vineyard, and rented it out to “husbandmen” and then left to go “into a far country for a long time.” In an article entitled, “The Wicked Husbandmen” published on biblehub.com we read, “the vineyard was let not to one capitalist, who might employ laborers to do the necessary work, but to a kind of joint-stock company of laborers who proposed to cultivate the property with their own hands for the common benefit.” When I first read this parable, I thought that it was run by one guy who was the main player because that’s how I imagined the situation being run, but this explanation would make sense as far as it termed “husbandmen” not “husbandman,” plural, not singular. It would also make it more accurate as far as how the Jewish government was being run at the time. Israel was occupied ...

J esus is refusing to tell them who gave Him the authority to teach and cast out the sellers in the temple courtyard, just like the chief priests are refusing to answer Jesus’ question about John. Jesus continues by telling a parable about “a certain man had two sons” and he goes to each so and says, “Son, go work to day in my vineyard.” The first son just flatly refuses and I assume does whatever he wants, “but afterward he repented, and went.” The second son agreed to go work in the vineyard, “and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father?” Of the two boys, which one did what his father had asked him? The one who refused but then went later after changing his attitude, or the one who said he’d go but then never did. It’s interesting to me that the Lord uses the analogy of the vineyard, especially considering that he just cursed that tree the day before and all the disciples had seen the effect that Jes...

The clearing of the temple and Jesus’ subsequent healing and teaching took up the rest of the second day of the week and afterward, He returned to Bethany. On the third day, while traveling from Bethany to Jerusalem, they came across the fig tree that the day before the Savior had condemned, and it was withered up and dead. The disciples marveled, but we already talked about the lesson on faith that Jesus taught to them concerning the tree. Upon reaching the temple in Jerusalem, “the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching.” Questioning Jesus while he taught in the temple assured the Jewish leadership of a full audience for the spectacle they were planning. From the article “By What Authority?” Ray Stedman gives some background saying, “Now these were no second-rate individuals who came to Jesus. This was a very imposing delegation made up of Caiaphas, the high priest, and Annas, his father-in-law, who was regarded...

After cursing the fig tree, Jesus and company head to the temple in Jerusalem. Just like we saw at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry three years ago, He is not pleased to see the “moneychangers” and animal sellers selling within the temple walls. We talked about it before, but what exactly did Jesus have a problem with? The temple only accepted Jewish money, but because Israel was occupied by Rome, the people used Roman money for everything outside of the temple. I’m not sure if that was for a specific reason or just because the Jewish leadership didn’t want “heathen” money in the temple. And again, people needed animals to sacrifice, and we know it was ok for the animals to be bought, instead of raising your own sacrificial animals and then bringing them on your journey to the temple from far away, that just wasn’t realistic. So if the money needed to be changed and animals needed to be bought and the people who provided those servi...

There are a couple of quick points that I would like to discuss that I missed over the last couple of days. The first thing is that the Jewish leadership rebuked Jesus for making such a commotion during His triumphal entry. The Pharisees “said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.” We know that they hate Jesus, but this isn’t a completely unrealistic request. The people were making noise, and in Jerusalem there was a fortress right next to the temple full of Roman soldiers just waiting for the Jews to make some sort of disturbance so they could come down and crush them. The Pharisees might have been justified in their fear that this commotion was about to bring the wrath of Rome down upon the whole city. Jesus is perfect, so we can’t assume that his response was anything other than a statement of fact, saying, “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” I’ve never thought of the Triumphal entry as...

Now we come to a part of the scriptures that I truly have not understood at all, ever, and honestly, it made me feel like Jesus was kind of being a jerk about it, but then again, this was previously, before I loved him. After arriving triumphal at Jerusalem and claiming the spiritual realm for Himself, Jesus goes to the temple, then returns to Bethany to spend the night. The next morning, they left Bethany and headed to Jerusalem but “he was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.” Wait, what? Jesus was hungry so he went to a tree for food, there was no food, so he cursed it? How did the thought process go from “I’m hungry” to “you’re dead forever because you don’t have any figs....

I know that Jesus is perfect and that he doesn’t make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get emotional. He has dedicated His life to the service of God, He alone can perform the single act that can save all mankind and He has agreed to do it at great personal cost. The atonement would literally kill anyone else, and no one else is worthy to do it, it has to Him or nothing. He spent a lifetime discovering who He is and His purpose as the Savior of all mankind, and then devoted the last three years of his life to that purpose. He was fully and deeply committed to the cause, and he didn’t need the atonement because he was perfect. He could have easily said, “nope I can’t do it, it’s too much and it doesn’t benefit me at all, I’m out.” The most interesting thing about the atonement is that it’s the one single event in the history of the universe that matters, and yet most people don’t even know about it. I...

This colt hadn’t been ridden before, so it hadn’t been trained on what to do. In the article quoted yesterday from jesus-story.net we learn, “A donkey usually carried a wooden frame that could be used either as a saddle or a base for a load. In this gospel story the donkey is a colt, unused to the framework or to a rider. So the disciples threw their cloaks over its back to make a kind of informal saddle for Jesus.” When riding a horse, and therefore I assume it’s the same for a donkey, the animal gets hot, the rider’s body gets hot and the place there the rider is sitting gets really sweaty. Basically, because there was no saddle and the animal had been outside that day, it was very likely to be dirty. The disciples didn’t want Jesus’ clothes to get dirty, so the disciples “cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.” In the article “What is the significance of the triumphal entry?” Fro...