JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. The Gospels are filled with stories of sick, blind, deaf, lame, paralyzed and demonized people. What do these conditions tell us about the situation in Israel at that time? What do the works of power among the blind, lame and demonized tell us about the Lord Jesus?

TK: Welcome to GearTalk, Tom and Jason here, and glad to be with you today.

JD: Yes, delighted to be back.

TK: We just went through a month in the Servant Songs, Jason, and you said something that as we were reflecting in our last podcast, Isaiah 53, about Jesus bearing the—and then we went to Matthew 8—bearing the illnesses of God’s people. And I’ve been working through Matthew in my own time with the Lord in the morning, and one of the things I’ve wondered is the fact that sickness, disease, demon possession were so prevalent in the land when Jesus came, how should we, as people who are studying God’s Word, think about that? Just happenstance, like everywhere else in the world, these are just bad things happening? Or does it tell us anything about the people of God at this time?

JD: It’s so easy for us in a world that’s so broken to think this is normal and fail to recognize that we’re living in a crooked world, that is a cursed world. And within the scope of the various covenants, that is these relationships between God and his people that pepper the entire storyline of scripture. In these relationships, all of them were grounded in obligations. Going all the way back to the garden, you have the relationship with creation, and Adam is the head, and that relationship was conditioned. God said that Adam could enjoy every tree in the garden except one, and insofar as he did, he would continue to live. And yet, if he failed to meet the covenant obligations and chose to eat of the tree that he was not permitted to eat, he would die. That is, there were blessings of that covenant, and there were curses of that covenant, conditioned on perfect obedience. And all the covenants throughout scripture have this conditional element that are apart. Indeed, in the fullness of time, when Jesus comes, the way that Paul words it, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. And here he’s talking about an age of the law covenant, the law that came 430 years after the promises were made to Abraham, that through him, the curse would be overcome by blessing, specifically blessing channeled through an individual male descendant of Eve, of Shem and of Abraham, and ultimately through Judah. The royal line would be established through the line of Judah and then through David, culminating in Christ. Those promises were followed by an age of law, of law that demanded perfect obedience and a law covenant that ultimately bore, according to Paul and according to Moses, a ministry of death, a ministry of condemnation. It ultimately destroyed Israel. So, in the podcast that Brian Verrett has been doing, he’s talked about how there are new Adam figures because the story is repeated. And just as God made commandments to Adam that he failed to keep and then Adam experienced the curse of death, seen in the reality of exile from that paradise, so to Israel is a new Adam commissioned to stand as royal priests in God’s world, displaying his greatness to the world, and yet they fail. And so just as Adam created outside the garden, was placed into the garden with a commission that he failed to keep, and then was exiled from the garden, Israel, as the son of God, commissioned to be a royal priest, fails to keep what God called them to keep, and experiences an exilic death, that is separation from the presence of God. Where God is his life, to be moving away from him is to be moving toward death. And in the Bible, that movement toward death is a movement toward curse. So there’s these polarities of blessing, or life that is a result of obedience, and then there’s this world of death or curse that is the result of disobedience.

TK: Would it be fair to compare it to, say, we make a contract to buy a house, and if I keep my terms of the contract, then I get to enjoy the house and whatever else, and good relations with the bank and things like that. But if I don’t fulfill my part, then something very different will happen. Is that a fair comparison to make?

JD: It’s a similar comparison, but not exact, because what distinguishes a contract from a covenant is that God stands as the witness. And in a contract, it’s simply between two parties with each bearing obligations. In your example, the bank bears the obligation of maintaining the house, allowing us to borrow this money, and we bear the responsibility of slowly, incrementally, paying off the loan, and yet God is not viewed as a witness to this covenant. And so the obligation element is the same, but it’s more serious to enter into a covenant because God is operating not only as a party of the covenant, but as a witness to the covenant. And he knows all that is going on outside and inside of the humans he has entered into relationship with, and he will justly, as the witness to the covenant, justly bring about curse. And so when we’re talking about the times of Jesus, he enters into the world under the law, that is under an age of the law covenant that has resulted in death.

TK: And why did it result in death? Why did that happen? Why are these the condition in the land?

JD: This is because Israel failed to keep its side of the covenant that God had made with them at Mount Sinai. I think of Daniel 9, where Daniel is reflecting from the exile; that is, he is in Babylon because Israel has been kicked out of the land. And he explicitly says, all Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And then he clarifies what the result has been. And the curse and the oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned against him. So what’s amazing is this, I’m reading from Daniel 9: 11, but Daniel 9 actually opens with Daniel remembering that God had predicted through Jeremiah that the exile, that is the physical separation of Israel from the promised land after the temple was destroyed and their cast out of the land, there would be 70 years of exile. Babylon first showed up at Israel’s doorstep in 605 during the very year that King Josiah died. And at that time, Daniel and his three friends were taken to Babylon. Then there was another exile in 597 when figures like Ezekiel were taken to Babylon. But then Babylon showed up finally and definitively in 586 and destroyed the temple and exiled those that were left. That is, took them physically out of the land and took another group to Babylon. So from 605, when Jeremiah, right around the time Jeremiah would have predicted the 70 year exile, that takes us down to 535. And we know that Cyrus’ decree that Israel could return to the land happened in 538 BC. So that’s right around 70 years to the date when Israel would have returned to the land and begun rebuilding the temple. What we learn at the beginning of Daniel 9 is Daniel is counting. And it says, “In the first year of Darius, in that first year of his reign, I perceived in the books the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.” And so he begins to pray to God and ask for the end of the exile.

TK: We shouldn’t be outside the land. We should be in our land. Bring us back.

JD: That’s right. The counting, the calendar, the promised end to the exile is near. We should be coming back to the land, just as Moses promised in Deuteronomy 30, that God would restore them to the land and then that that would be followed by circumcision of the heart. Well, Daniel knows all these predictions. And he knows the specific timing of the return to the land. And so he prays. But into this context, in Daniel chapter 9:24, God says, you’ve been anticipating 70 years. And that’s right. And Isaiah, whom we spent a month with, predicted that Cyrus, one named Cyrus, 150 years before Cyrus even appeared, Isaiah says, one named Cyrus will return Israel to the land.

TK: And just as an aside, this is one of the reasons people will say sometimes, well, that had to be written after the time of Cyrus, because no one could have known that.

JD: Right. And yet we believe in a God who’s able to reveal the future, because he holds it all in his hands. And he named Cyrus by name through Isaiah. And yet Cyrus wasn’t the only one that Isaiah had predicted. He had predicted that Cyrus would be followed by a servant, that return to the land would be followed by reconciliation with God. And there would be a period of separation between Cyrus and the servant. And in Daniel 9, we gain clarity about that separation of time. Because what we read is that it won’t just take 70 years, it will take 70 weeks of years. That is something akin to 490 years, until Israel will actually be reconciled with God. That is, the exile or the age of curse and brokenness will continue until the days of the Messiah.

TK: So Daniel is thinking a shorter period of time, and what’s made clear to him is it’s going to be longer than you think it is, but there’s still a limit to it.

JD: There’s a limit to it. So that 70 years will be the initial restoration back to the land, but when they arrive in the land, what do we read in Ezra and Nehemiah? That they’re still under Persian rule, so that both Ezra and Nehemiah say, “We are slaves.” They have no king. The Messiah hasn’t come. There’s no king in the throne of Judah. Instead, they are under the rule of Persia, and then alongside the Persia comes the Greeks, and then the Romans. This is the pattern. And Israel in the days of Jesus remains under foreign rule, with no king of Judah on the throne. And Jesus is that coming king. And a major thing that hasn’t happened that we read about in Ezra and Nehemiah, the people’s hearts have not changed. So figures like Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi are still dealing with a problem people who haven’t experienced the heart circumcision that Moses referred to, that Jeremiah spoke of, that Ezekiel anticipated. Their hearts are still far from God. They’re in need of true reconciliation. The servant has not appeared.

TK: I think we get pictures of that, like Jesus dealing with the Pharisees, things like them asking questions, can you divorce your wife for any cause? That them, the man with the withered hand, and having hearts that do not desire to see this man healed. So you can definitely see in Jesus’ walk, wow, this is a hard-hearted people. When the disciples are picking wheat or just heads of wheat on the Sabbath day and Jesus said to them, go and figure out what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

JD: That’s right. Jesus is confronting an audience that has the same hard-heartedness as Isaiah’s audience had.

TK: Right.

JD: God had commissioned Isaiah, “Go out and proclaim to them, keep looking but don’t see, keep listening but don’t hear.” And in a passage like Mark chapter 4, we actually learn explicitly, Jesus says, “This is why I speak to them in parables.” And then he cites Isaiah 6, so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and turn and be healed. That means these people are spiritually blind in Jesus’ day. They are spiritually deaf. But that’s not the limit to the disability. There are also in Jesus’ day the physically blind and the physically deaf. There’s the physically lame and the broken. There’s the imprisoned. There’s the imprisoned physically. There’s the demonized, who are spiritually bound. And all of that is a sign that we are still living in the day of exile. Israel has not been reconciled to God. That is, they are under the covenant curses that Moses had laid out in the book of Deuteronomy. The very presence of brokenness, whether it’s barrenness of the womb or physical disability, all of it was a sign that Israel in Jesus’ day was still under darkness, still under curse.

TK: I think the first miracle described in the book of John, the wedding at Cana in Galilee, where there’s no wine at a wedding, that’s a perfect picture of this. Jesus’ mom is saying, wait a minute, the Messiah is here, but yet there is lack in the land. And she’s just telling him, be who you’re supposed to be, because this situation shouldn’t be happening right now.

JD: That’s right. That’s exactly right. The very presence of lack is a sign of curse. Now, what’s significant is we have to remember, moving a little bit ahead in John, when we get to John chapter 9 and we see this man who is born blind, the disciples said, who sinned?

TK: Right.

JD: Obviously, his blindness is a curse. Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And Jesus is explicit. And I would say the same thing about going back to 1 Samuel chapter 1 and looking at Hannah’s barrenness. The barrenness is a sign of curse. She is born during the age of the judges, when there was no king in the land, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The presence of a problem, say physical disability of any sort, is not necessarily a signal that the individual is being cursed because of their sin, but it’s rather a signal that the entire community is being cursed because of sin. And there could be individuals like Hannah, who has a heart toward Yahweh, and cries out of her brokenness for God to help, and in the midst of her experience of curse due to the community’s sinfulness, God can still show up and give light. And that’s even the very language at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, when it cites Isaiah chapter 9, this is how he kicks off Jesus’ ministry. The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali and Matthew chapter 4, the way of the sea, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness, that’s curse language, have seen a great light. And for those dwelling in the region and the shadow of death, on them a light has dawned. That’s Isaiah chapter 9:1-2. And then Matthew says from that time forward, Jesus began to preach, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the fullness of time. This is where new creation begins to dawn on old creation. The old creation was under the curse in Adam. The old creation was the old covenant that Israel was a part of, that too had produced curse, because Israel is like a new Adam. But Jesus enters in as a new human and a new Israelite to bring a new creation and a new covenant. And so this takes me back to Daniel 9, what was promised after the extended season, after Israel had returned to the land, but their hearts hadn’t changed, 70 weeks, that is 70 weeks of years, potentially like 490 more years.

TK: If a week is 7 days, you’re saying 70 times 7. That’s how you got there, right?

JD: 70 times 7 equals 490. That’s right. That’s right. But it says 70 weeks and potentially 70 weeks of years, that is until the Messiah comes, 70 weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city. So 70 weeks related to the people of Israel and Jerusalem. And what will God do? he’s going to do 3 things ending the curse: finish the transgression, put an end to sin, and atone for iniquity. But he’s also not only going to overcome the curse, he’s going to bring blessing with 3 different ways: to bring everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and profit, which I think means to show that indeed the predictions of old have come true. And then finally to anoint a most holy place or person. Who is that? Is that anointing? Is the Messianic anointing that would come on Jesus as the ultimate temple, as Jesus as the ultimate Israelite, on Jesus as the ultimate priest? This would happen after the extended period. And so when we open up the Gospels, what were… I mean, from Matthew 1:1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah. The Messiah was anticipated to come at the end of the age of curse. He’s the one who would crush the serpent’s head, and the serpent is the one that brought curse into the world. So this is why in a text like Luke chapter 4, Jesus cites Isaiah 61 and declares, “I’m the one this text was talking about. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he’s anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, all of those—the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed—all of those are those living under the curse, and that’s how we’re supposed to see it. This is a cursed people. Israel is a cursed people. And Jesus comes in with a message of good news and hope that the curse is being abolished in the rise of the sun.

TK: I think that’s so…

JD: Light is overcoming night.

TK: That’s so helpful, because take your pick, whichever story, because it’s over and over in the Gospels. I’m thinking the little girl who has died at 12 years old. This is—we’re not supposed to hear this just as, wow, accidents happen or sicknesses happen back then, just like they do now. We’re supposed to say, wait a minute, these are God’s people in God’s place. How is this happening? And then understanding, oh, it’s happening because they are under curse. But there is a sign that the one who is the curse defeater has come because he goes and he heals her. And that’s married with the story of, for instance, the woman who’s bleeding. Similarly, 12 years, she’s been in this condition. I love the end of the book of John where it says, “Jesus did many other signs which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you might believe,” so that when we see a miracle and we say this is more than just a miracle, it’s a sign of something. Signs point to something. So Jason, what is the sign pointing to? If you’re a Jewish person who loved God, knew the Old Testament, and you saw Jesus heal a blind person, and what are you thinking at that moment?

JD: You are thinking that, I mean, blindness is especially unique because nowhere else in all of Scripture do we see anyone, for example, in all the healing ministries of Elijah and Elisha, no one is delivered of blindness. In all the Old Testament, the only figure who would give sight to the blind is the Messiah. It’s Isaiah’s anointed royal servant. He alone would bring sight to the blind. So this is why, for example, in a text like Matthew 11, John hears all that Jesus is doing. It says, John heard while he was in prison about the deeds of the Christ. And so he sends his disciples to Jesus to say to him, “Are you the one who is to come? Or shall we look for another?” And Jesus’ answer is so striking. He says, “Go and tell John what you hear and what you see.” And now he’s just going to cite a host of Isaiah passages. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And then he simply says to John, blessed is the one who’s not offended by me.

TK: What does he mean by that? What would that mean?

JD: Well, first of all, this whole series of texts, I already mentioned it, he’s just drawing on predictions in Isaiah that are directly related to the coming of the Messiah. The one who is to bring light into darkness, the one who is to save and rescue through a new Exodus, but one who would, through his own substitutionary atonement, reconcile people with God. He would fix the problem of separation between God and man that stretches all the way back to the Garden of Eden. So, for example, the blind receive their sight and the deaf hear. Isaiah 29:18, “In that day, the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of the gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind will see.” Or Isaiah 35:5, n the age of new creation, “then the eyes of the blind shall be open, and the ears of the deaf unstopped” This is unmatched in Old Testament times, even among the prophets who did miracles. This was the Messianic era, finally when the serpent would be overcome. The lame walk, Isaiah 35:6, Then the lame man shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy, for waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The age of new creation was the age associated with the Messiah. This is the day when the lame would walk. So what Jesus is doing, he is declaring, I am the one. The lepers are cleansed, Isaiah 53:4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. The very griefs, the very sorrows, he took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Back in Matthew chapter 8, that is what it says after Jesus has healed many of physical ailments and cast out spirits. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. So I would be prone to read that text and think, I have to just leave that in the spiritual realm. But Matthew is clear, Jesus came to overcome all the curse. And this is an example that he is the curse overcomer when he cleanses the leprosy on a leper. Or the dead are raised. Isaiah 26:18, God simply declares, “Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy, for your dew is like the dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” This is what Jesus was doing.

TK: People have hope not only inwardly, but outwardly.

JD: They do. Jesus came to reconcile all things to God. And now he’s bringing this message of good news. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings this good news, who declares God reigns. God reigns over cancer. He reigns over paralysis. He reigns over blindness. And yet, what does he say to John? And here we now finally get back to your question. What does he mean when he says to John at the end of Matthew 11:6, “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me?” Where is John when Jesus says these words?

TK: He’s in prison and he knows very well from Isaiah that one of the things the Messiah does is set the prisoners free. It’s a mark of the Messiah.

JD: It’s a mark of the Messiah. And he’s been delivering people from bondage to the devil every time he casts out demons and casts away the presence of demons. He is freeing people. And yet John is still in prison.

TK: And the story—

JD: Over all the—

TK: —I was just going to say John obviously didn’t know what was going to happen next because he might have been thinking, well, he’s going to be here any day now, but obviously we know very well how the story ends there, is he’s killed.

JD: He’s beheaded. Throughout all of Jesus’ ministry, we only know of him specifically raising three people from the dead. At his resurrection, or at his death, a number of others were raised from the dead, we’re told in the Gospels. And after Jesus, we see figures like Paul resuscitating at least one individual, and yet most people who died remain in their graves. Most people in the world who were blind, who were deaf, who were lame, did not get delivered in the days of Jesus or in the days of the apostles.

TK: We could ask like John the same question. Are you the one?

JD: Are you the one? That’s right, and I think that’s why Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are not offended by me.” By the fact that God, through Christ and his Church, I’m thinking about a passage like James 5, call upon the elders of the Church that they might pray for you, that you might be healed. God, in his providence, chooses to allow the future to intrude into the present in some lives, that certain people are healed and it gives testimony to the intrusion of the new creation into the present. But most people, God chooses, even in the days of Jesus, in the days of the early Church, all the way to this day, God chooses to save people internally and to give them the power to persevere, like John in prison, to persevere in their faith, not be offended at Jesus’ timing in bringing blessing and overcoming the curse. We are still living in an age of curse, and yet the new creation has dawned. Yet while it is completely fulfilled, it is not finally fulfilled. We are still waiting for the ultimate consummation. Even someone like Lazarus had to die again after Jesus raised him.

TK: Right.

JD: He still experienced the brokenness of this world and still had to identify with the sufferings of Christ. Jesus is our head. And before he could experience his resurrection, he had to carry the cross. And he calls his church to carry the cross, his followers to carry our own cross en route to our own crown. So the resurrection is ahead of us. And yet we are blessed if we are not offended by the fact that we still experience suffering. And so we want to be, may God help us be, like John the Baptist in prison, who is not offended, who is able to celebrate that Jesus is indeed the one, he is indeed our hope. He, in his coming, he proved that our full inheritance, with no more tears and no more pain, is indeed ahead of us. And may we pray with fervor for healing and for help, knowing that he died to bring it.

TK: And it’s surely coming.

JD: And it’s surely coming for all who are in Christ. Yet may we be those who are not offended if it doesn’t come in this age, but we only taste it at Jesus’ return.

TK: I wonder for John hearing that, just as he reflected on Isaiah, and the message comes back to him. And what he’s hearing kind of is also something a little bit like this of, John, I am not coming to get you out of this particular prison. And so he’s reflecting on this, blessed is the one who’s not offended. And having to deal with that within his own soul, like he really is the Messiah, and he really gets to do what he wants. But I do know this, John is not in heaven right now, saying to the Lord, you did the wrong thing. You should have set me free from that particular prison. He is not saying, you owed me deliverance from herod. And he ultimately was delivered.

JD: Yes, he would be among those who are crying out to God. I’m reading Revelation chapter 6:10, when the fifth seal is opened, he would be among those martyrs who are saying, “O Sovereign Lord, Holy and True, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Then they were given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.” So there’s John, he is there right now. The souls of all those who were martyred, as it says in Revelation 20, and the souls of all those who died of old age, all of whom died trusting in Jesus. They are all seated there waiting. Waiting.

TK: Not offended.

JD: Not offended and living in hope. I think about 2 Timothy 4, those who are loving the appearing. There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, he’s going to make all things right, will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but to all who have loved his appearing. May we be among those who celebrate the dawn of the new creation, in the coming of Christ, all the healing ministry that he purchased, that will be consummated at his appearing. May we be among those who are not offended by the fact that we must identify with Christ’s sufferings, carrying our own cross, in order to publicly display the love of God, the worth of God, to a needy world who didn’t get to see themselves Christ die. We get to, even in our suffering, put Christ on display to the world, all for the sake of his name, and all in the living hope, to which we were born again, to an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us, a crown of righteousness that will be rewarded to me, to you, indeed to all, who have loved the appearing of Christ on that day.

TK: Amen. Amen. Well, Jason, it has been sweet reflecting on these things, and it makes me just think, the number of times I think I have been offended to one degree, or at least grappled with offense, of the way the Lord is working and thinking that at this present moment, he owes me something. And I desire to be one who sees him, sees his work, delights in it, but sees the fullness of what he’s doing. And like John, it is okay with certain circumstances, because I know the Lord already has dealt with those things as well.

JD: Oh, praise the Lord, that’s right. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. He has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And that’s where our living hope is. And so every experience of discipline and challenge that we face in this crooked world, we don’t have to be despondent, because the ultimate curse has been overcome. God is for us. And Jesus died and rose, and indeed is seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us and has secured for us all the power we need to persevere, even in the midst of this broken world. These light and, what Paul calls, momentary afflictions are indeed preparing for us a weight of glory that is incomparable to anything we are facing today. May we be those who love Christ’s appearing, even as we celebrate what he has already accomplished for us. This is good news.

TK: Amen. All right, Jason, blessings to you this evening and your family and all that you do. Thanks for spending some time in the Word together.

JD: Amen. Amen.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Go to our show notes for additional resources explaining the significance of Jesus’ actions when he was on Earth.