BEMA 90: A Gospel of Two Kingdoms

Transcription Status

26 Jun 23 — Initial public release

14 Dec 22 — Transcript approved for release

A Gospel of Two Kingdoms

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today, we finish our look at the story of the birth of Jesus, juxtaposing two kings and the kingdoms that they bring.

Marty Solomon: We got introduced to Herod in our last story, but we were busy looking at Magi and astrology and astronomy and all of that. We really didn’t have time, I wanted to stop us, but we had been stopped enough already. Matthew’s writing along, and all of a sudden he talks about Herod the Great. I want to do some work today to try to appreciate the line, because I think we just read over it like, “Oh yes, Herod, he’s a king. He’s the one that killed all the babies.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There are all kinds of historical contexts behind when Matthew says, “In the days of Herod the Great.” Or we’ll look at Luke and Luke’s going to say, “In the days of Caesar Augustus.” That sentence carries so much historical context and weight to it that I want to go ahead and take a look at that.

I’ve got some notes I’ll read today. Keep me tied to my objectives. How about that? See if we can get out of here in under 45 minutes this time. Back in the beginning of our study, all the way back in Session 1, Brent, we talked about—what did we call the narrative? What did we call it?

Brent: A Tale of Two Kingdoms.

Marty: A Tale of Two Kingdoms. Which two kingdoms, back in Session 1?

Brent: Empire and Shalom.

Marty: Empire and Shalom. I feel like we spent a pretty good amount of time in Session 1, I feel like we really spent a lot of time in Session 2, juxtaposing these two kingdoms, talking at length about the dangers of empire and the invitation of shalom. Just Empire and Shalom, Empire and Shalom. Which narrative is this? Which narrative is this? All of those kinds of things. Whether it was their time in the desert, learning how to lead with their voice and following God’s voice, whether it was learning how not to use the stick, whether it was the tension of living in shephelah, the challenge of living with abundance.

In Session 2, as they built their own physical empire, we kept seeing an agenda of juxtaposing, in the scriptures, what we call Empire and what God will call Shalom. Empire and Peace. This narrative makes a prominent appearance in the very beginning of the Gospel records as well. There are two birth narratives, at least direct birth narratives; one in Matthew, one in Luke. I say that because I always like to say that John has a birth narrative. It just looks different.

Two direct birth narratives, one in Matthew and one in Luke, and both of them set the stage for the life of Jesus in a world of contrast. They do something, they utilize the same tool to do something very, very similar from two slightly different perspectives. Of course, Matthew is going to focus on Herod because Herod was, in a practical sense, not a literal sense, but in an economic, a sociopolitical-economic sense, Herod was the king of the Jews. That was Herod the Great. We said that Matthew’s writing to what kind of an audience?

Brent: Jews.

Marty: Jewish audience, and so Matthew pulls on his context, Jewish context, and he’s going to juxtapose Jesus’s Kingdom with the kingdom of Herod the Great. How about, let’s see here, the Gospel of Matthew draws out a deep background in the rule of Herod the Great. It showcases how paranoid Herod was that a future ruler would even pose a threat to his kingdom. I don’t remember. I don’t think we’ve talked much about Herod in Session 3 yet. Have we? Is this kind of our introduction to Herod?

Brent: I think we’ve maybe briefly mentioned him when we were going through the timeline of everything.

Marty: Herod being one of the wealthiest guys who’s ever lived. Well, if history’s correct at all, if history’s even remotely correct. Herod’s the richest man to ever walk the face of the planet Earth. Also, one of the most paranoid men to probably ever walk the face of the planet. Crazy wealthy and just crazy as well. Very, very paranoid individual. Let’s actually go ahead and finish off. We’re going to look at the rest of chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew today. Go ahead and read us that passage so we have some scriptural context to what we’re talking about here

Brent: When they had gone, that being the Magi. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.”Get up,” he said, “Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” He got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, “Out of Egypt, I called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then, what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child in his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who are trying to take the child’s life are dead.” He got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. When he heard that Archelaus—

Marty: Archelaus.

Brent: —was raining in Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets that he would be called a Nazarene.

Marty: There you go. Again, more references to more Old Testament prophets. If we’re going to listen to a Jewish author speak to a Jewish audience, we need to go back to those references about Rachel weeping in Ramah and those voices that are being heard, we need to go back and look at those prophecies and say, “What does the context of that reference have to add as far as commentary and color to the story that Matthew was telling?” It’s in the Text.

Brent: I’ve got to say, Joseph has a whole lot of dreams.

Marty: He does.

Brent: Like, my goodness. Here’s Joseph, here comes that dreamer.

Marty: Exactly.

Brent: [chuckles] Just like the other Joseph.

Marty: Yes. Where does he come out of in the story of Matthew?

Brent: Out of Egypt.

Marty: Out of Egypt. There is without a doubt, obviously, Matthew trying to point out this parallel and he’s going to be working with that a little bit with his Jewish audience. In fact, he’s going to want to show Jesus almost as a new Israel. He’s trying to connect Jesus as this to his Jewish audience. This Jesus has connected with us in our story. He’s walking our story for us. He’s putting Torah on display.

That’s a very, very good observation. Absolutely. All right. Depending on how reliable we find our historical sources, extra-biblical as well as biblical, Herod, was the richest man to ever walk the face of the planet. If history is correct, it wouldn’t even be close second. Bill Gates would mow Herod’s lawn. One of my teachers taught me that Herod’s income came in at well over a hundred times the national GDP of his country.

Now, I’m no economist. I don’t know how the math works on that. I don’t know. Don’t ask me to try to explain that. I’m quoting what was taught to me, but just imagine for a second, Brent, if even a fraction of that is true. If Herod’s personal kingdom, his personal economy that he ran grossed a hundred times the national GDP of his region. Remember, he was the son of who, Brent? Where did all this wealth come from?

Brent: The spice traders from Idumea.

Marty: Yes. Antipater. However you like to pronounce that, wherever you put the emphasis on the syllable. That is his dad from Idumea-Nabataea, and he inherited—what did they run, Brent?

Brent: The spice trade.

Marty: The spice trade. He inherited this massive, massive business and brought all this wealth into it. It’s not just the wealth of—it’s incredibly possible he had a hundred times the GDP, because it’s all coming from that international spice trade, not just the region of Palestine that he rules in. In Israel, everywhere you go, you can see the impact that Herod had on the world. Brent, you came with me and really, I’m going to try to do this in a podcast, but really the only way to see this and learn this—you can speak to this—but you need to come with me over to Israel.

Marty: The scale is difficult to comprehend without standing there.

Brent: Yes. To see some of the things that you get to see, to travel to Avdat and talk about Herod’s beginnings and to do some of this stuff, it just really helps you understand Herod. You went to Israel. Tell me about the opulence that you saw. Compare Herod to anything else. Tell me what your experience was like.

Marty: Everything that Herod does is bigger, better, fancier, shinier.

Brent: Like, a little bigger?

Marty: [laughs].

Brent: A lot. It’s incredible. The stones that he built the Temple Mount out of are so massive. I’ll throw a picture in the show notes. I may make a little presentation or something. I’ll put a picture in there and I’ve got a guy from the trip, not a short guy, standing next to these stones and he’s just dwarfed by them.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: They’re incredible.

Marty: The picture that you all have isn’t even of the largest or one of the largest. Oh man, why did I just lose the word that they use, for those stones? Anyway, one of the largest stones that they have is actually in a place called the Rabbi Tunnels, which we didn’t get to go to. I’ve stood there and put my hands on the stone. 260 metric tons, that stone weighs. We literally could not get the cranes into Jerusalem today to move this. We don’t have the technology to move the stones. So many things that Herod did, he didn’t write down because he wanted history to know him as just pure greatness. His engineers weren’t allowed to record how they did anything because they would do that at the cost of their life. We don’t know today so many of the things that Herod accomplished, how he moved the stones. We have theories of how he must have moved the stones to the temple. Quarried about three to four miles away in a stone quarry, outside of Jerusalem.

That’s a long way to pack a stone that weighs 260 metric tons. We think he did it with rollers [laughs]. That’s our best option. How did they grow wine in Avdat? We have no idea how they did that. We don’t even have a good theory right now of how they did that. That was where the Nabataeans and Idumeans were, one of their compounds, one of their cities that they had built was from. Let’s see, what else? Herod. Masada. Talk to me about Masada.

Brent: It’s out in the middle of the desert. It’s this sprawling palace. I think we don’t even know that he was ever there.

Marty: Scholars are now saying that he must have been there. We don’t have a reference to him ever being there. We just don’t know how much, but scholars are now saying it seems to be that he would’ve been there.

Brent: It’s crazy that he wouldn’t have ever gone there. It’s not like his primary residence or anything.

Marty: He built these three palaces to get away. He was so paranoid that people would try to kill him that he had this getaway plan with three palaces that would take him about six to eight days and he could be all the way back in Idumea and Nabataea and out of the country.

Brent: Massive palace built on this little terraced rock thing, way up above the desert. You have to get to it by a ramp or whatever. Or no, they built the ramp? How did that work?

Marty: Well, the ramp was built by [the Romans when] the zealots overtook Masada.

Brent: How did you get to it before that?

Marty: The only way up to Masada was this pathetic—and they might have had some other systems that we don’t know about, whatever it is, other kinds of pulley systems to take other things up. As far as getting up the mountain, you had to go up the snake trail. There’s a trail that just snakes up, switchbacks up this mountain. You’ll throw a picture of Masada up there as well so people can appreciate that. Some 21, 17 to 21 cisterns, I believe. I think of the 17 largest cisterns of the world that we’ve ever found, 12 of them are on Masada, if I remember that stat correctly. Some ridiculous millions and millions and millions and millions of gallons of water are able to be stored in Masada—largest cistern in the world.

Brent: All of the greatest luxuries of Hellenism.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: Just right here, out in the middle of the desert, on top of this mountain to be used occasionally by Herod.

Marty: Right. One of Herod’s favorite palaces, the Herodium, we’ll throw a picture of the Herodium in your presentation, at least one or maybe a few pictures of the Herodium. Herod wanted to build a palace on a mountain, but there wasn’t a mountain, so Herod just built a mountain [laughs]. He just builds a mountain.

Brent: That’s what you do.

Marty: Yes. That’s what Herod does. Herod is, “I want something, I just do it,” because money’s not an issue. I just pay people to do whatever. He literally built a mountain to build his—and we’ve got it, we’ll show you a picture of that. He built a mountain and then built a palace on and into a mountain. This is Herod and we’re just giving you a fly-by, just skipping a stone across the cliff notes of who Herod is here.

Herod was the richest man, let’s see here, definitely, the richest man to walk the planet. Herod desired to be the greatest man who ever lived. History knows him as Herod the Great. My teacher Ray always called him Herod the Wicked. He couldn’t stand that history sees him as greatness because it’s just Hellenistic greatness.

Brent: Is he greater than Alexander the Great?

Marty: Ooh. We’re going to have to put him in the same category. Depends on how we’re measuring. Depends on how we’re measuring. Herod the Great wanted to be the greatest man who ever lived. He took this pursuit seriously and did everything so wildly over the top that, to this day, we are not sure how he and his architects did some of the things he did at that point in history. Yet, the King of the universe wraps himself in flesh and is born in a stable in Bethlehem, which isn’t just the backwater town of Joseph and his family. Bethlehem also happens to be the location for one of Herod’s three great palaces. Guess which one it is?

Brent: The Herodium.

Marty: The Herodium. One of the phrases that Ray used was—in fact, he even had a video called “In the Shadow of the Herodium,” a little Christmas special, because Jesus is born, almost literally, in the shadow of the Herodium. In the Gospel you have these two kingdoms juxtaposed. You have Herod the Great on a Hellenistic level, one of the greatest men to ever live, on one hand. Then, on the other hand, you have God, the Creator of the universe, who doesn’t choose to be born in a—how does God choose to engage the greatest Hellenistic man that the world maybe has ever seen, or however you want to talk about that? How is God going to answer Herod? You would imagine with his own palace, with his own kingdom, but he doesn’t.

He goes right underneath Herod’s nose. He’s born to a poor peasant family, struggling with rejection, pushed out to the stable and he’s born in the sheep doo. That’s the juxtaposition of the Christmas story. You can have all the—and what drives me crazy is our American Christmas songs that we sing. The silver and gold, and Jack Frost nipping at your nose. I’m not even going to touch the Santa thing. Just the Christmas song. It’s all about wealth and comfort. That’s Herod. It’s the wrong kingdom. Our Christmas is tied up in the wrong kingdom, because when God came, he wrapped himself in flesh and he was born in a sheep stall.

To steal a phrase from my teacher Ray, the subversive nature of God’s plan is that he will send his son to be born in the shadow of the palace of the greatest man to walk on Roman soil. There are two kingdoms that are being put on display in Matthew’s Gospel. One king is the richest man to ever live. He constructs incredible buildings that stagger the mind and accomplishes incredible feats of human engineering. His ingenuity and wealth are second to none. He builds mountains where there aren’t any, pipes and water to places that could never previously be reached, and corners the market on beauty and innovation.

He is the most powerful human being the world has ever seen. His life is decorated with silver, gold and the richest fare. Another King is born to a poverty-stricken, rejected family from the rural town of Nazareth. He is born in sheep crap surrounded by the ash of shepherds’ fires and the feces of cattle. His birth is announced to the marginalized of society and his advent is celebrated by shepherds. One king is the leader of empire. The other is the King of Shalom.

We could do the same thing, by the way, Brent, before we’re done here with Luke’s Gospel, because Luke will employ the same tool. You have the opening verse to the second chapter of Luke. Don’t you?

Brent: In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

Marty: That’s right. “In those days, Caesar Augustus…” In those five words, Luke says more than we probably realize. These words are chosen deliberately by Luke. Luke is trying to set his own stage for his own narrative about the tale of two kingdoms. His version of the Christmas story puts us in the juxtaposition between two other kings. This king thought himself to be God incarnate, the son of an ascended Julius Caesar. Augustus claimed that a mighty star in the sky—apparently seen by many—I believe it’s called Caesar’s Comet. I think it’s on Wikipedia. If you can find an article, you can link it to the show notes, Brent.

It is known today as Caesar’s Comet. He said—this was Octavian at the time. He wasn’t known as Augustus at that moment. There was a battle for the throne between Mark Antony, after the assassination of Julius Caesar. There’s a battle for the throne between Mark Antony and Octavian. Mark Antony has all the practical reasons to be ruler. Octavian is Julius’s adopted nephew, who, because of his adoption, is Julius’s legal son, and there’s a battle for the throne. Mark Antony has all the power, but Octavian has all the political wit. Because of that, Octavian seizes on this.

Again, we got astrology at work here. This unbelievable star, Caesar’s Comet, that apparently was seen by almost everybody in the empire, was common news. Almost everybody had seen it. Because of that, Octavian seizes on this opportunity. He says that Comet was actually his father Julius Caesar ascending to his rightful throne as God. “If Julius was God, then that would make me,” Augustus says, Octavian said, “the son of God.”

From this point in Roman history, emperors would, and without exception, claim incarnate deity among their many attributes. They did not do that very heavily in Rome, by the way. It wasn’t a very popular position to have in Rome. Rome saw their position as very human. They didn’t want to connect it with deity, but especially throughout the world of Asia and Asia Minor, as well as other areas of what we would call Greece, deity worship, emperor worship as deity was very, very common, and almost every emperor had it. It was just the most effective way to do your PR in their world. Augustus ended up being exclaimed by Roman propaganda. You might remember, Brent, it was just a few podcasts ago, when we talked about gospel narrative. We actually read a plaque from Priene, which announced a gospel of Caesar Augustus, this very same Caesar. It’s propaganda like that that claimed that Augustus was—and we have this on currency, we have this on other pieces of literature, other stuff that we found, plaques, those kind of things, different references to Augustus as the Son of the Most High, the eternal Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, these were references that were used by Caesar Augustus.

It was often proclaimed that there was “no other name under heaven in which a man could be saved from terror, except that of Caesar Augustus.” Yet, in a stable is born a baby, who Luke claims to be the true King of Kings, the true Lord of Lords, the true Prince of Peace, and the Son of the Most High God. One King plays the part well, the other king challenges everything we expect of the ruler of the universe. It’s a tale of two kingdoms, and we are being invited in the Gospel to consider our deepest assumptions about the world. What is real power? What is real wealth? Where does security come from? Who is God?

What is God trying to save me from? What do I really want, and what do I strive for? Empire? Or Shalom? Would I even have noticed the King of the universe, born in a stable, or would I simply have been looking for a better Caesar? I don’t like that question because it’s super, super convicting. I don’t think I would have seen Jesus for who He was. I think I would have been looking for a more powerful ruler, a better president, a more effective politician. We have a tendency to look for Caesars. We have a tendency to look for kings. We don’t have a tendency to look for gods born in sheep stables that have come to announce—and we just haven’t moved on, on some level.

In one way, we’ve moved on a bunch, but in another way, we haven’t moved on from where we started. This is still the same narrative, a tale of two kingdoms. Do I have a narrative that’s driven by fear? Do I have a narrative that’s driven by power? Do I have a narrative that’s driven by force? Or, do I have a narrative that’s driven by invitation to a better way, not of self-preservation. That’s Caesar, that’s Herod. Herod was all bent on self-preservation. Do I have a narrative built on self-sacrifice? That’s what God has come to do, to be born in the sheep crap. To say, “This is how much I love you.” That is a completely different narrative than the narrative of empire. Hasn’t changed. Three sessions in, Brent—hasn’t changed.

Brent: Yes, the tale of two kingdoms, the gospel of two kingdoms.

Marty: There you go.

Brent: All right. Well, get in a discussion group, wrestle through this, talk about it. All sorts of questions that I’m sure we’re bringing up. Work through it. Get in touch with us, if you need to. Marty’s on Twitter at @martysolomon, I’m at @eibcb. Go to bemadiscipleship.com. You can find discussion groups, you can get in touch with us. You can do all the things you need to do. Thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.