This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we see Jesus go on the offensive, confronting the corrupt priesthood that rules in Jerusalem.

So we have headed into the final week of Jesus' life. And understanding this week is, this is one of those things I...

This is like recent history for me that I've grown in my knowledge of the like a new some of these pieces. I didn't really have my whole consciousness wrapped around the final week well.

And within the last, I don't know, five, six years, like those things started to click with me. And I was like, oh my goodness, understanding this week is so critical and essential.

So we're gonna... And I got some more study to do to be honest, I'm just reading some books now. So who knows in the middle of our study of the last week, I might even add some new stuff or change my mind. I reserve the right to learn new things.

As should we all. So I'll let you know. I'll let you know if this book that I'm reading is a recommendation for this time of Jesus' life. But we're gonna...

We're gonna go with what we got on the table at this point, what I have learned up to this point. And we gotta go back and we have to review like those five people groups, because this is critical to understanding what's happening in Jesus' final week. Jesus has spent three years.

And we're gonna actually tag two podcasts in the show notes, Brent, we're gonna tag Pharisees and we're gonna tag Sadducees.

Just so that we can go back and review those two groups, if necessary, if not great. But if you need to go back and review, go back and review those groups, because Jesus has just spent the last three years with the Parashim, with the Pharisees.

He has been spending all of his time in that devoted religious world. And really he's been taking... Jesus has been acting. He has been a part of the Pharisee world. He hasn't been on the outside looking in.

Jesus has been operating as a Pharisee. He's been operating as a completely different kind of Pharisee. He has been offering a critique of the status quo of the Pharisee world view.

At least a large portion of it. But Jesus has been three years as a Pharisee in the Phariseeical world dealing with the religious Jews. And he has been working and working and working at trying to deconstruct the destructive self-righteous religiosity in all of its forms.

And that's not just throwing the Pharisees into the bus. This would be religiosity in all forms, including today.

Like Jesus would come sitting in our churches and he would spend all of this time trying to deconstruct our religiosity and how it keeps us from the mission of God.

Jesus looks an awful lot like the God of Session 2 or the God of Session 1. When we talked in the book of Judges about what kind of a cycle Brent?

The redemption cycle. And this God's never ending patience, like bottomless patience. This is what Jesus has been portraying over and over again. We see in Judges.

Over and over again in Judges and then over and over again through the Gospels. This is what Jesus does in the world of Pharisees. Jesus never loses his mind. He never gives up. He just for three years over and over and over again.

He starts talking to his disciples after the story of the transfiguration about how he's going to go to like he's now saying his sights on Jerusalem. He's like, I'm going to go die. I'm going to go die.

And his disciples are like trying to like talk him out of it. But Jesus knows what's going to happen because this last week of Jesus when he finally gets to Jerusalem.

Jesus is going to confront religious corruption. These are two different worlds and it's so important to see that. This is no longer the world of the Pharisees. Like people all the time talk about how the Pharisees and the Sadatis killed Jesus.

No, they did not a very, very corrupt religious mafia, that mob, that seven family mafia that made up the chief priesthood in that second temple period.

They are the ones that killed Jesus. It's total corruption. It's not Judaism. It's not the Pharisees. Now there are some Pharisees in the story that help them at different points. That's in your gospel text.

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