Mark 12: Prophetic Streams of the Shema and the Undertow of Prophetic Sin

Mark 12: Prophetic Streams, the Shema and Prophetic Sin

My main occupation is revelation, not by my cleverness or some new way of looking at the scriptures, but by something eternally old and clever.

We speak a lot about allegory, symbolism, and the rules of meaning. We do this because we know that the Bible is so figurative and indirect, purposely veiling truth behind mundane things and expressions. It’s not a choice that it is so, its that it is so stated or implied repeatedly by the biblical writers. But we also expect this because it is not natural for us to think that Jesus came to tweak the world-religious paradigm a little, leaving it only changed formally, but we expect that he came to deliver something a lot like he was under his appearance of a mere man. Something unexpected, transformative, shocking, awe-inspiring, and transcendent. We want to be true to the nature of the given revelation, and we want to be true to the idea of revelation.

Is not a refusal of a remarkable truth by acquiescing to sensibility and self-benefit to bring it down to something puerile and impotent, the whole story of the betrayal, abuse, and murder of Jesus? Should not this natural sin of carnality, of the satisfaction with populist agreement, of being impressed with authority or stature instead of Divine disclosure, and interest in self instead of the spiritual thing in and of itself, of the need to bring ourselves into relationship with other people over one with God, that of preferring natural expressions and claims to what we should expect as those out of the intentions of an alien being, be at the root of our problems interpreting this book and our religious practice? Should this sin not be the very reason why God speaks figuratively and indirectly? Should we not expect that if we are missing something vital and Holy as truth under the surface text of the Bible that it would be that which is an integral and unmovable from it as the extent that we take efforts, as sinners, to avoid it?

Mark 12

Take the whole Chapter of Mark 12 as a case in point.

Before we read, do we really think that the outcome of our exegesis will be any more profound than the presupposition we carry going in about the limits of what may come out of it? Is Jesus just saying “believe in God,” “believe God is one,” “believe that you are to love your fellow man and God,” “your sin is that you don’t love God”? The answer is, yes, we do, to our shame. However, we take it as piety.

Passages such as the following are never even included in the category of revelation in the remarkable sense, and it is this very thing that to me that so illustrative of what it means to ignore, relegate, demean, revile and kill off Jesus. If Jesus in this is the Word of God, and this Word of God is quintessentially the revelation of Him from the prophets (messianic prophecy),  is then refusing the whole issue of messianic prophecy as the love and magistrate over our exegesis not our chief sin, which Jesus is addressing and which we are resisting? Face it, readers, the Pharisees, the Sadducee’s and the Scribes are not those other people. Its the whole church: the heretics and apostates are us, the Catholics and Protestants, all the other permutations and those unaffiliated that sit at home and watch TBN.

Let me show you how to read a passage like this.

The preface is the following:

Mark 12:1-12 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some. Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others. And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.

Prophetic Streams: Interpretive Assumptions

Carried on this site are the interpretative assumptions following:

1. It is likely parabolic, figurative, hiding something deeper.
2. Since the story is a prophecy, what follows in extended discourse is likely about the subject of prophecy, that being the Word of God, Jesus Messiah.
3. The passage is about the religious establishment understanding that the parable is about Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah that will be killed by such as them, which is proven true by their anger and their attempt to kill him on the spot. Our logical presupposition is that this chapter is about establishing the quintessential sin of denying that messianic prophecy of Jesus is intended by God to dominate our religious motivations and the religion itself.
4. Jesus not only speaks a prophecy but uses messianic prophecy to equate himself with it (Psalms 118:22).

 Mark 12:13-17 And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words. And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar’s. And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.

Prophetic Streams: Application

Using what we drew out of the preface, what does this “image” on the coin mean, “image” (εἰκών ) being the word for its incorporeal signification?  Does “penny” or “coin” really mean only “penny” or “coin”? Is this really about giving money in the collection plate, or giving your time in “ministry”? Is it not to be broached here the idea of a distinction between an essential carnal coin and a spiritual coin, and a physical act and a spiritual one?

The Pharisees and Herodians, the enemies of the aforementioned messianically prophetic motivation, especially applied to Jesus, try to make him stumble at this his Messianic claim of himself. There is a currency of man and the currency of God. Each one has the stamp of the image of its owner, and to whom it is paid. One is purely carnal, one is ultimately spiritual, just as there is a carnal kind of action of the body and an ultimate spiritual type of operation of the heart. Accordingly, there is a carnal and a spiritual kind of religion. One kind of religion is practiced for gain, for self-aggrandizement, for intellectual pursuit, for the acquisition of personal righteousness, community stature, and money, which insists upon not looking too deeply lest they find something derogatory about themselves and their prospects for salvation, and another that cares only about the truth, assumes that the appearances of the world and people might be obscuring it, and who look diligently for it and find it. Now, is the signification of the coin, under this assumption, satisfactorily found in “coin” or “religious involvement”? No, neither one, physical currency, or religious activity is uncommon to the world and independently revelatory.

The money of God, the “true riches” that he gives to man is the truth of the Messiah Jesus from the prophets, and the currency of God given to God in payment is the same thing: faith in the truth of the Messiah Jesus from the prophets. One has the image of man upon it, the other with the unique, supernatural mark of God. Give to man what is man’s, but give to God what is God’s. That is something that the religious status-quo would not do.

Mark 12:18-27 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

The Resurrection and Faith Motivation

I draw your attention to the first verse: “which say there is no resurrection.” Here is a denial of prophecy (Isa 26:19, Eze 37:4-5, Job 19:23-27, Dan 12:2) and its power, and in turn a denial of God and His Son, who will be the first fruits of the resurrection (1CO 15:20). The religious here replace this concern for one for self-created and artificial biblical controversies based upon bad presuppositions, here being “resurrection will get complicated, since marriage is forever.” Jesus says they do not know the scriptures or their power. They don’t have God’s true riches. They only think they do.

I am quite clear that Jesus, citing and alluding to messianic prophecy and using concepts that are central to messianic prophecy, is setting this oracular revelation itself, and in turn, himself, to be distinguished from Pharisaical faith motivations. That’s is quite a bit different than merely saying that Jesus is offering his person by using prophecy as a means to that end. Messianic prophecy is a means to an end, but before that end Jesus it is the beginning, the middle, and fulfilled end. In this way, true religion is not directly about a miraculous person unless it’s shown through a religious spirit that won’t take it by the testimony of things originating within the world.

Remember when I said that revelation is the text and the miraculous truth that comes from it? Remember when I said that there is a carnal form of interpretation that denies this? The text is prophetic and the power is prophetic because the prophetic both characterizes the text as a whole and is a miracle in fulfillment in Jesus.

As for its power, combining all we know about the heavenly state through prophetic thought, we are easily led to a deduction that there is no marriage in heaven, not just that Jesus said so.  But, although we have a direct statement about it by Jesus, are there are OT scriptures about this. Nope, and we don’t need them. All we need is not to let our carnal side, as the Pharisees are doing, make all things carnal, leading us away from the conclusion that carnal is carnal and spiritual is spiritual.

That is, marriage is about sex and reproduction set by God to be between two people of different sexes. A spiritual state does not involve biology and therefore does not involve marriage or requires such a covenant. But beyond this logic taken from the OT is the obsession with marriage within such a document of spiritual power that shows so much, a passion which is sinfully read back into the whole of the scriptures, and is a symbol of madness in an opaque religion of the religious mind. If marriage is the type of theological preoccupation even when Messiah has come and is in the process of disclosing the secrets of existence, this is, by definition, a carnally motivated concern. The logic is that there is no such preoccupation with marriage in Heaven because its a natural preoccupation of just about everyone. It’s not an issue of concern in the New Covenant because the New Covenant, not the Law, is about a concern for heavenly Truth.

Jesus says they are in error for this misplaced interest. This denuding of the power of the scriptures, to push out the weightier matters of the revelation, i.e., not thinking prophetically, particularly about the meaning of the fulfillment of prophecy of Messiah, that New Covent Truth based upon belief, which he discusses next.

 Mark 12:26-27 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

From the Burning Bush. God declared this:

Exodus 3:8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Revelation from the Buring Bush

God speaks to Moses to deliver a prophecy. The delivery of prophecy, God’s promise, is the entirety of the reason for the encounter and is a future disclosure of the plan of redemption. God fulfills his promise, and this sanctifies God in Faith. It verifies his righteousness, his ability to save, his sovereignty, his singleness of divinity. As with Moses, this is the mission also of Jesus here and everywhere in establishing God’s authority by a display of the supernatural.

Wolfhart Pannenberg has this to say about this appearance of God. He says that the implied resistance of Jahweh to disclosing His name reflects the in Near Eastern culture tat knowledge of a name gives control over a person or thing.

The name is Exodus 3:13 (“I am, or will be, who I will be”) points to the self-identity of God. He will l sow himself in his historical acts and will not come under human influence.”

Here is a fuller quote from this Systematic Theology, Vol. 1:

HYVH is a prophetic name, and Moses was addressing this prophetic being.

In the parallel passage in Luke also, it is made even clearer why Jesus is using the prophecy from the Burning Bush as a proof text for the resurrection:

Luke 20:38 For he is not a God of the dead, but the living: for all live unto him.

Exodus 3:13 shows that when Moses asks for the name of God who identifies Himself as the God of the patriarch’s, he is asking for fuller disclosure of his nature. Hence, the manifestation to the Fathers does not appear to have been the supreme form of the knowledge of God.”

The “dead” and “the living” do not refer primarily to people, but to a quality of revelation: one which can’t give up God’s secrets and the others that will. “The supreme form of the knowledge of God” is the manifestation of God in Messiah, not the patriarch’s, giving rebuke to the proud connection of the Jews to Abraham when Abraham was a figure of a future revelation, not a present one.

God says that he looks upon Abraham, Issac, and Jacob prophetically, in prolepsis of another day (Ro4:17; 14:9; 11:13-16). God is the God of the New Faith, not the Old symbol.

Romans 4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

Jesus, therefore, counters his detractors who are majoring in minors such that they have even come to deny such a fundamental prophetic doctrine of the resurrection and instead spend their time speculating about relative rubbish, the Old. The biblical oracles fulfilled in Jesus are about what they should be religious. Substances, not symbols.

Mark 12:28-31 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

The Shema

The next task of Jesus is to tie the Shema of Deu 6:4-9 to the Decalogue, but in doing so, he links the oracles to the essential nature of the Law.  Reading this portion makes it clear why the people are to believe that God is One:

Deuteronomy 6:10-12: “And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. “And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not.”

They believe God is One because he fulfilled his prophetic Word.  Love for God is of the heart, the soul, and mind: in the spirit. The decalogue is God’s prescription for man for how he is to prepare and return the favor of this assured fulfillment in Christ, the first half of which concerns man’s duties to the respect of faith in God’s person. The second half concerns man’s duties to others, which Jesus encapsulates as “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This is again a parabolic command not the do something or not do something physically, but to spiritually, by faith, do something and not do something.

God promises and delivers to man for his benefit. In thanks and emulation, man believes God’s fulfillment and gives his expression of faith to others for their benefit in bringing them to God, making a full circle.

In v. 33, the questioning scribe agrees, repeats what Jesus said, expressing what faith is as “more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Implied, perhaps not intentional, is that faith by the Prophetic Word of demonstration (Pannenberg’s term) is the whole reason for the institution of burnt offerings. That is a direct repudiation of the Pharisaical, Sadduceean, and Herodian religious priority against the messianically prophetic one.

The reply of Jesus in v. 34 is that “you are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

The Son of David

To cement this interpretation down conclusively, Jesus formulates his own hard question for these people, using the messianic prophecy of Psalms 110:1:

Mark 12:35-40 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly. And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.

They cant interpret this passage rightly because their hearts are in pushing a religion, not a Truth.

Implied by the scribes is that the Messiah can’t both be David’s and God’s heavenly son, as they took Messiah to be a man, a conquering King to overthrow the Romans, and David’s mere inheritor by the Tribe of Judah. But how, given the verse, could this “Son of David” not be a messianic title a Devine fulfiller of the promise given David for an everlasting kingdom (Da 2:44; Da 6:26; Da 7:14, Isa 55:3, Jer 33:17, Psa 89:29,  1 Chronicles 17:11-12; 22:10)?

Again, we see the contrast between anti-revelational and religiously skewed thought toward carnality, symbol, instead of incorrigible revelational substance. Jesus quotes directly what this is all about, Messianic Prophecy, as he often did at least by allusion, when resistance against it, and Him, became obstinate and hardened.

Man’s confession that faith is more than burnt offerings, of religious rites, of public displays, status, self-benefit, emotion, and the rest of what drives religion is about the Messiah and only Messiah, the signification of those religious symbols.

Prophetic Sin: So what about the Shema, again?”

In conclusion, again, is this not a commentary on the true corruption of our religious age?

The oracular stream of the Bible is slow, gentle, and peaceful (Isaiah 8:6). It does not make a tumult (Isa 42:2-3). It does not seem very exciting (Isa 53:2) to the religious. It can actually be a nuisance, something that is in your way, something to avoid (Isa 8:4). But, if ignored, it is guaranteed that it will swell into a torrent, overflow, and be that thing which once offered reconciliation but is now a means of judgment. (Isa 8:7). Much like God himself?

Jesus is that prophetic stream, the stream of the words of the prophets. It’s not about you, religion, rites, creeds, declarations, tradition, intellectual puzzles, your feeling of piety, the Shema, or any religious trope that is only potentially in its service.

Any guess now as to what Jesus meant by this?

Mark 12:43-44 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

Matthew 5 and the Adultery of the Heart: Passing by Nehushtan

Mark 2: Bride Chambers, New Cloth, and Jesus: Passing by Nehushtan

What is the Word of God?: Passing by Nehushtan