Jesus' Childhood (3D Jesus Part 3)

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Welcome to Out of Zion with Susan Michael, an exploration of the Bible and the land of

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Israel.

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From ancient biblical sites to the story behind the stories, join Susan on a journey through

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the most exciting book on the planet.

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Hit the subscribe button for future episodes, which will deepen your faith and bring the

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Bible to life.

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And now, here's our host, Susan Michael.

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Well, hey there, and welcome back.

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This is the 3D Jesus Bible series, and this is part 3 about Jesus' childhood.

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Now my goal in this series is to help Jesus come alive to you like he never has before.

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That you will understand the story behind the stories about Jesus.

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That you will understand things that are happening that maybe are not so obvious to our 21st

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century mind.

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And once we learn the history, the culture, the religious setting, we understand so much

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more of what God was doing in and through Jesus.

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So today we're going to talk about his early childhood.

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Now we've already talked about his family origins from Nazareth, how he was born in

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Bethlehem, but there's another very interesting part of this story that comes right after

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his birth in Bethlehem.

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And we read about this in Matthew chapter 2.

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Now I'm not going to read to you the whole section because it's actually the whole chapter

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of Matthew 2 that we're going to be going through today.

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So what I'm going to do is summarize the story for you, but I really suggest that once we

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finish today's program that you go and read Matthew 2 for yourself, and I think you're

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going to see it jump off the page and just come much more alive to you as you know some

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of the details behind it.

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Now in this story we see that it says that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea,

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during the days of Herod the Great, that behold wise men came from the east and came to Jerusalem

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and said, where is he born king of the Jews?

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Because they had seen his star rise from the east.

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And when Herod heard about this, he was very troubled.

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And he called all the priests together and the scribes and he said, where is the king

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of the Jews supposed to be born?

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And they said, of course, in Bethlehem.

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So Herod tells the wise men, he said, go to Bethlehem, you'll find him there.

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When you do, bring him to me because I also would like to worship him.

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Well, of course, we know that's not true at all.

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Herod was very, very paranoid.

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And he was very concerned if there was a rival king that had been born in Bethlehem.

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So it says, though, that the wise men go to Bethlehem and they find, they come to the

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house and they see the young child with Mary his mother and they fall down and worship

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him and they open their treasures and present to him gold and frankincense and myrrh.

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And then being divinely warned in a dream, they do not go back to Herod and give him

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any information, but they depart for their country from another way.

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Now after this, an angel of the Lord comes to Joseph and warns him to take the baby to

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Egypt and get away from Herod until such time as Herod would die.

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So then Herod, once he realizes that the wise men have not come back and he's very, very

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concerned about this.

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So he orders what's called the massacre of the innocence.

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But he calls for the murder of all babies in Bethlehem that are two years old and younger.

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And soon after this, not surprisingly, Herod dies.

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I'm sure there was a little bit of divine retribution in this story as well.

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And so an angel appears to Joseph in Egypt and he says, it's safe now, bring the child

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and go back to the land of Israel and they do, and they return to Nazareth.

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So that's the story in a nutshell, but I want to take a few very key elements of this story

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to explain to you what's going on here.

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Now the fact that there was a star, this is a Messianic expectation within the Jewish

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people and it's based on a scripture in the book of Numbers.

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And it says that a star shall arise out of Jacob.

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And so somehow a Jewish tradition interpreted that to mean that the Messiah would be, of

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course, out of Jacob, but the Messiah would be as a star and then out of that there's

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a tradition of an actual star itself.

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So but having established that now, who are these wise men from the east, the Magi from

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the east?

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And you know, we see in our Christmas pageants, which I have to correct for a minute, we have

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the manger, we have the animals, we have the baby Jesus, and we have the three kings from

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the Orient presenting their gifts.

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Well, the three kings were not there at the birth of Jesus.

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And this story takes place sometime after the birth.

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And how do we know this is because in verse 10, it says here that they come to the house

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and they see the young child and the word used here is not the word for a baby.

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It's the word for a toddler.

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So they come to a house now, Mary and Joseph are in a house, and it's not with the animals,

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it's not in the manger, and they find the young toddler with Mary's mother and they

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fall down and worship him and present their gifts.

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So who are these Magi that are following this star?

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When did the star rise?

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And you know, in the world that time, travel was not overnight.

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And this star and this constellation that got their attention, it seems like by the

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time they actually arrived in, and they first go to Jerusalem, because if this is the star

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of a king, then where do you go but to the main city where the king resides?

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So they go there looking for this newborn king.

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And so it took time, and it seems like it may have actually been as much as two years,

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because Herod, he asked them, when did this star first appear?

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And then when he orders the death of the babies, it's anyone two years and younger.

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So it seems that Jesus could have been as old as two years, perhaps a little bit younger.

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So who are they?

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Well, it's very interesting because of course the Medes and the Persians considered their

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priestly castes to be Magi, that's what they called them.

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So these were high level people, and they were known for the religious things of the

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Medes and the Persians.

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So that would be interpreting dreams, and that would be understanding stars, and as

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they are predicting things, the constellations, and of course along with that goes magic and

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divination and all.

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And but why would they be following a star for the Jewish king?

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And did they know that?

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And what did they know about that?

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And so they are readers of the stars, and they find in the stars certain predictions.

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And so, yeah, that's a part of what they did.

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But very, very interesting is to realize that about 500 years later, we find in the book

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of Daniel that Daniel, who interprets the dream for Nebuchadnezzar, is actually put over all

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of the Magi in Babylon at the time.

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So he was put over in charge of them.

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That means that he was able to teach them.

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He taught them all about his traditions, the Jewish traditions, the beliefs, and with that

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would have been that this star that would predict the Messiah.

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And they had carried it on, not because they were Jewish, but because it was one of the

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things that they incorporated into their body of belief.

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And so here they come following that star, thanks to Daniel.

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And they find here Jesus the toddler, and so the angel warns Joseph and says, get out

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of here, hear it, nose, and get to Egypt for safety.

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So Egypt.

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You know, in Egypt, there was a large Jewish community already living there.

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Why?

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And from when?

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Well, because of the exiles.

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So during the time of the Assyrian exile, and especially during the Babylonian exile,

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some of the Jews from Judea had fled down into Egypt to get away from these invading

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armies coming down from the north.

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So since the time of the Babylonian exile, there had been Jews living in Egypt.

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And there was a very large community there.

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The Joseph and Mary would have gone and lived with other Jews in the area.

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They would have been cared for.

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They would have been received and welcomed.

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It's very interesting.

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I was just in Egypt a couple of years ago, and we visited a church there, which is said

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to be built over the site of where Jesus lived when he was in Egypt.

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And this is a very, very special tradition in the Coptic Church in Egypt.

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And so they have preserved these traditions and the history.

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And I saw in their courtyard a map of various areas along the Nile where Jesus would have

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done certain things, or Mary and Joseph would have taken him and done certain things.

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And I'm sure there's probably a church built over every one of those sites.

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But this is an important tradition for the Coptic Church.

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And there seems to be real historical evidence for it.

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Now let's go back to Herod the Great.

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Skeptics say that there's no proof that Herod the Great really called for the death of

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all the babies in Bethlehem.

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And so, you know, it's one of those things.

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One day we may find the evidence that proves it.

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But if not, this story is so keeping with who we know Herod the Great to be.

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And I need to tell you this story.

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Herod the Great was a very complicated and very contradicted individual.

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He was a descendant of the Iromians, which were Arab and the Nabataeans.

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And they lived within that, remember, Hasmonean kingdom where the Hasmoneans were trying

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to repopulate these areas with Jews.

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And they actually forced some of the people within their borders to convert to Judaism.

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So Herod the Great's ancestors had been forced to convert to Judaism.

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Maybe he was himself as a child.

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And so he was Arab by ethnicity, but he was Jewish by religion.

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And he was very Greek in his culture.

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And he was a Roman vassal king.

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So he was very, very complicated.

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And the Romans named him King of the Jews.

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So 37 years before the birth of Jesus, or 30 years before the birth of Jesus, it was

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Herod the Great that overthrew the Hasmonean Jewish dynasty in order to start his own.

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And because he was a convert to Judaism, he really was a conflicted Jew.

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He wasn't really very religious.

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He wasn't well liked or accepted by the Jewish people.

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And so he did certain things to try to please the Jews.

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But at the same time, he was very almost pagan, I mean, in his Greek culture and in his political

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allegiance to Rome.

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And he is known as being very evil and very sick.

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Historians all agree.

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He was very, very depressed and he was extremely paranoid.

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And that's why this story is so keeping with who Herod the Great was.

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Herod married a princess of the Hasmonean line.

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Her name was Miriam.

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And he had sons by her.

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And at one point he got so paranoid that they were going to try to do away with him and

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reestablish a Hasmonean dynasty that he murders her and their two sons.

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He murders another son.

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He's totally paranoid and very, very vicious.

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Josephus said, Josephus tells a story that Herod the Great knew he was so hated by the

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Jewish people in his kingdom that when he died, it wouldn't be a day of mourning.

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It would probably be a day of celebration.

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So what did he do?

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He ordered leaders from every village in every area of the country to be rounded up and locked

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up.

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And that on the day that he died, this was approaching his death.

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He was very, very ill and he knew it.

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And that on his death that they would all be murdered.

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And that way the land would mourn on the day of his death.

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Now that's a very sick person.

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And luckily on the day of his death, sorry, his sister and his son did not carry out his

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wishes and those men were all released, they were not killed.

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Herod the Great was also brilliant and he was a master builder, probably the best in

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the world at that time.

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He undertook colossal building projects.

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He was also extremely wealthy and a very, very shrewd business person.

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So he was able to invest tons of money into humongous building projects.

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He was only secret to Caesar in some ways and in some ways he actually exceeded Caesar.

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And we know that out of about 20 of his projects in the Holy Land were actually world class.

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They actually broke world records.

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I'm just going to give you a few examples.

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The famous Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

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We go there today, it's a big plaza, but of course the temple was destroyed long ago.

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But Herod's temple that stood on that plaza, first of all he built the plaza and it was

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the largest in the known world.

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He built the temple, it was the largest in the ancient world.

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It stood 15 stories high.

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It was massive.

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And in order to expand this whole platform on which he built this magnificent temple,

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he had to build huge retaining walls to hold in the earth.

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And some of the stones in those retaining walls are over 500 tons stones.

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And so it's really quite an amazing feat that he built.

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And the Jews were very, very proud of this temple.

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I mean this was just a magnificent temple built.

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Herod said to be of the grandeur and dignity that his capital city should have.

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But everybody knows he also did it to try to appease the Jewish people.

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Another amazing building project of Herod was the port in Caesarea, which is on the Mediterranean

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coast.

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It's called Caesarea Meritima.

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And that was the most technologically advanced harbor in all of antiquity.

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He used a cutting edge hydraulic cement that he could use underwater.

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And out of almost nothing, he built this huge port, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean.

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That of course produced amazing amounts of money for him as trade went through there

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and it made him very, very wealthy.

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Another huge building project was the fortress on Mitzata.

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But today when you go with me to Israel, we definitely will go to Mitzata.

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You have to take a cable car up to get to the top and now you'll see the remains of

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the most amazing palace that Herod built up in the middle of nowhere.

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I mean, Mitzata is a huge rock, a huge rock, mountainous rock in the middle of barren wilderness,

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nothing but dust and rocks.

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And up there, he built a two palaces with a swimming pool and Roman bathhouses and they

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had a whole agricultural area where they raised crops up there.

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How did he do it?

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How did you get water out of nowhere?

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Well, he built this amazing system of aqueducts and reservoirs.

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So as it rained in the hills in Jerusalem, he had aqueducts catching this rain coming

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down into the desert and brought it up to Mitzata and into cisterns and retaining system.

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It was really magnificent and you go up there.

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His palace is three tiers right on the edge of the cliff.

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I mean, it's gorgeous.

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Another amazing building project is what's called the Herodium.

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This was the largest palace in the world.

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It was larger than Caesar's palace.

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And this was the palace that Herod built for himself and where he was eventually buried.

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It just so happens that when you are standing outside of Bethlehem, looking out over the

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shepherd's fields around Bethlehem, you'll see in the distance a hill that looks like

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a volcano where Herod had this hill cut off and the top removed.

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And that's where he built his palace, the Herodium.

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So Jesus was born in this simple cave or manger outside of Bethlehem in the shadow of this

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egotistical, evil, tyrannical king, which was an anti-Christ kind of figure.

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Yet, Herod put Judea on the map.

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Throughout the Roman Empire, they knew of Judea and the Jews because of these magnificent

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building projects and of the wealth.

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So King Herod really put Judea on the map and I think helped pave the way for the gospel

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of Jesus Christ to go forth from there throughout the Roman Empire.

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Now that brings us to the childhood of Jesus.

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We know that Joseph is told in a dream that Herod has died.

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He can come back to the land and so he brings Mary and Jesus and they return to the city

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of Nazareth.

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And the scriptures actually become quite silent about Jesus' childhood.

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We only know really of one story where at the age of twelve they go up to Jerusalem to

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celebrate the Passover feast and Jesus is left behind at the temple and the caravan,

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the whole village, they're headed back to Nazareth and they've been gone for three

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days before Mary and Joseph realize that Jesus is not with the children.

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They go back and they find him discussing the things of the law and the Torah with the

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priest and everybody is astounded at the wisdom of this child.

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That's the only story we really know from the scriptures about Jesus' childhood.

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So what can we assume about his childhood knowing how families lived at the time of

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Jesus and in the area there of Nazareth of Galilee?

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We do know from the scriptures, let me say first, that Jesus did have brothers and sisters.

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So we know he had four brothers because they're named by name.

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It's James and Joseph and Simon and Judas.

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And it says he also had sisters, plural.

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So he had at least two sisters.

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James, the brother of Jesus, later became the head of the church in Jerusalem after Jesus

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died and ascended into heaven.

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That says a lot to me.

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When you've grown up in the same house with your brother, Jesus, and you go and head up

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the movement of believers in the divinity of Jesus afterwards, that says a lot to me.

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Because when you grow up in the same family, you know so much about that person.

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And even Jesus himself said that a prophet is usually not accepted in his own hometown.

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A lot of it's because of that.

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But his brother, James, became the head of the church there in Jerusalem.

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Now Nazareth, we know it was small.

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Probably all of 150 people lived in Nazareth.

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And as I said, they were really an extended clan, one big family there.

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But it was big enough that they had a synagogue.

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And synagogue is where you went to learn.

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And so they would have taught Torah there.

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And Jesus as a young boy would have begun memorizing Torah as a small child by the age

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of five or six.

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And by the age of ten, he would have memorized the Torah, which for us in the Christian Bible,

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it's the first five books we call the Pentateuch or the Torah.

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He would have had those memorized and he would have begun memorizing the oral Torah.

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So these are the oral traditions that the Jewish people passed down alongside the written

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tradition of the Torah.

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Jesus at the age of twelve, thirteen would have begun to learn a trade.

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And this is why it's interesting when they found Jesus in the temple, what he said to

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his mother and father was this.

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He said, don't you know that I should be about the business of my father?

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Now Joseph's business was as a carpenter or a tradesman.

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It wasn't in the temple.

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So which father was Jesus talking about?

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But his heavenly father, that that was the business Jesus was going to follow.

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It wasn't going to be the business of the carpentry.

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Although we do know that he did do carpentry as a young man in the home there with Joseph.

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Torah was everything for the Jewish people.

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It was a part of their everyday life.

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And this is something, you know, for us today in our world, we have to admit we are more

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Greek and Roman in the way we see the world.

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In the Jewish or Hebraic mindset, all of life is worship.

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And that's why they pray before they do anything.

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They have a blessing for everything.

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Everything that they do in life is seen as unto the Lord.

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It's really very beautiful.

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And so Torah was talked about all day long by everyone.

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It was acted upon.

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It was obeyed.

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It was taught.

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It was spoken.

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And so the women were very, very familiar with Torah as much as the men were, although

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it was the men that did more of the formal study of the Torah.

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Every Sabbath in the synagogue, one of the members of the community would read from the

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Torah and give an exposition of it.

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They all studied it.

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They all taught it.

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They all lived it.

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The rabbis taught that the highest form of worship was study of the scriptures, not even

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prayer.

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It says, when you pray, you speak to God.

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But when you study the scripture, God speaks to you.

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That's why they love to study the scripture.

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And that's what we need to learn from them is that love of searching out the scriptures

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and letting God speak to us in it.

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Now very quickly, there were in the time of Jesus, which differs from the Old Testament

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time.

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And the Old Testament time when the tabernacle was there, you had the priest, and then you

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had the office of prophet.

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But after the Old Testament, the last book is written in Malachi.

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It's sort of like the last prophet that we really know of.

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And so what begins to develop in this 400 year period in between the Old Testament and

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the New is a little bit of a different system.

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And this system was made up of synagogues.

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There were synagogues everywhere.

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Every community had a synagogue.

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And it was a place where they came to learn.

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And the people that were over the synagogues were the Pharisees.

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They taught the law.

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They studied the law.

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And they taught the law.

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And you had your rabbis.

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And you had a system outside of the tabernacle and the priest.

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And so in Jesus' time, there were three different classes of what we would call religious clerics.

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In Jerusalem, you had the Sadducees.

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There were only 71 Sadducees.

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And out of their midst was the High Priest, and then they were the priest in the temple.

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And they were the highest authority.

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They sat on what was called the Sanhedrin.

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And so they were the priestly class.

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They were very affluent.

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They were very powerful.

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But there were only 71 of them, and they were in Jerusalem.

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All throughout the land then, you had the Pharisees, and the Pharisees were out teaching

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in the synagogues and with the people and helping to interpret the law at the everyday

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level for the people.

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But because the Sadducees had become corrupt, I mean power corrupts, and a lot of times

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affluent corrupts.

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And so this priestly class in Jerusalem was becoming more and more corrupt.

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And as they did, there was a third group that broke off and left Jerusalem and went out

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into the desert to live in a way almost like what we would call today as monks.

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They were called the Essenes.

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And they really emphasized purity.

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They got away from the unclean, compromised political affluent priesthood and were out

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in the desert praying.

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They were scribes.

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They were writing the scrolls and praying for restoration of purity to the Jewish people

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and to their leadership.

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It is believed that in Nazareth and in the Galilee in general, there was a little bit

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of influence of the Essenes.

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And there was a bit of an emphasis on purity.

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And we know this because of the archaeological finds.

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In the Galilee, there was a lot of stoneware.

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They ate from stoneware.

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Why?

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Because stoneware could not be polluted.

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It was a part of a emphasis on purity.

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And so it seems like that Jesus' upbringing may have been a little strict, a little more

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emphasizing that purity.

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And when he left, then Nazareth and began his ministry, we see him interacting a lot

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with the Pharisees.

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And that's for next week.

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But this is kind of how our Jesus grew up there in Nazareth.

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And I just want to end with one final point.

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Jesus was a wonderful son and brother.

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And we know that because his brother James becomes the head of the church.

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That doesn't happen if you're someone that your brother would dismiss.

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But I believe he was also a good son.

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And so he did enter into the business with his father.

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And he worked with his hands in carpentry.

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Some people say that at that time, the word, the Greek word that's used here, doesn't necessarily

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mean wood carpentry.

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It can mean stonework because that's a lot of the building was done with stones in the

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days.

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And while that may be true, there's a church father that was writing in the second century.

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And his name was Justin.

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And he wrote and said that 100 years after Jesus, so this is in the mid-second century,

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he said that there were still plows being used by the farmers that had been made by

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Joseph and Jesus.

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So Jesus was known for making plows.

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And they were still in use.

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They were made so well.

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The worksmanship was so good.

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They were still being used 100 years after his life.

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This is Jesus the child, fully human, fully man, from humble beginnings, a wonderful son,

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and a wonderful brother.

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And all this sets the stage for what we're going to talk about next time when he reveals

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himself as also fully God.

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And he begins his ministry there in the region of the Galilee.

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So I look forward to seeing you back here.

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And until then, God bless.