BEMA 102: Son of Man

Transcription Status

2 Oct 24 — Corrections by Brent Billings approved

6 Aug 23 — Initial public release

1 Feb 23 — Transcript approved for release

Son of Man

Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today we look at the story of a paralyzed man and his faithfully determined friends who inspire his healing.

Marty Solomon: Yes. Last week we took off from the Gospel of Matthew to talk about the next story that was in Matthew, by going to the Gospel of Mark. We need to talk about the next story of Matthew, which is the story of the paralytic, but I want to stay in the Gospel of Mark, but it’s not where we left off in the Gospel of Mark. Mark puts it in a completely different place. We’re going to have to go all the way back to Mark 2. Is that right? Did I get that right?

Brent: Yes.

Marty: You’re going to start at the beginning of Mark 2, Brent. Let’s talk about the next story of Matthew by talking about Mark again.

Brent: A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd—

Marty: Okay. Jesus is in Capernaum in one of these insulas. Have we looked at insula yet? I don’t know if we’ve looked at insula. Have we?

Brent: Maybe a little bit.

Marty: Let’s see here, maybe a little bit. I’m trying to think of where we would’ve looked at insula already. Did we look at it when we looked at Pharisees? Did we put insulas in the Pharisee conversation?

Brent: Possibly. I know I had a picture.

Marty: Did you have insula? Yes, we did. Jesus is in one of those insula structures. In fact, we can even put the link of that episode or the presentation or whatever we have in the show notes of this episode. Jesus is back in this land of the religious triangle, the Pharisaic worldview, the worldview that he is most a part of and aligned with, you could say, as far as his lifestyle and what he’s teaching to and the conversation he’s trying to have. He’s back there.

He is teaching in one of their homes. It would’ve been typical, they would’ve been used to this, rabbi in somebody’s home teaching. Also typical, the house is packed full. One of these insulas where you can fit tens of people. Typically not hundreds of people. It’d have to be a pretty big insula. You might be able to fit close to a hundred people in a large one, but a ton of people just packed into this house, just wanting to hang on rabbi’s every word. Along comes this paralytic carried by his four friends and we’re told that they can’t get to Jesus because this house is so packed. Everybody will come to sit at the feet of a rabbi to hear him teach and talk, especially somebody as brilliant and as good with the text as this Jesus character.

He’s in Capernaum, where he’s based out of. They’ve probably been waiting for him to get back from the other side of the lake, as Matthew tells it anyway. Here they are, and everybody is in the house. Go ahead and pick up where you left off.

Brent: Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.

Marty: Okay. I love that part because they can’t get into the house. They go all the way up on the roof of a home and they start digging through the roof. I’ve heard a lot of people say this would’ve been hours, there about. The roofs are made with branches, then mud, and then, depending on what period of history they’re coming from, tiles, then more branches, then more mud, and then more tiles.

This is a long project. You are wrecking somebody’s construction, the construction of their house. You are destroying it. It takes forever to do. It’s going to be obvious that a bunch of people just climbed up on the roof of the house and are now digging a hole. What I love about this is they’re so not Western, because in the Western world, we would just be like, “Hold. Time out. Somebody go grab those guys, tell them to quit digging a hole in this guy’s roof,” and make room and everybody get out of the house, or Jesus will walk outside the house or whatever we got to do, but tell them to quit digging a hole in the dude’s roof.

In this world, I would’ve loved to have known what Jesus did as mud is starting to fall on his head. Does He just keep teaching? Is he just silent and then sits there? If we understand this moment, we’re starting to understand how rabbis work and how the world around them expects them to work, because whatever the rabbi does, it’s all a teaching lesson. In fact, that actually is going to bring up a great point for this story, because Jesus is going to—spoiler alert—he’s going to perform this miracle in healing this paralyzed man.

When a rabbi—as if a rabbi performing miracles happened every day. It wasn’t as uncommon as we think. Jesus wasn’t the only rabbi performing miracles, according to Jewish history, which we shouldn’t be surprised by. There’s lots of people in the Bible that perform miracles, Elijah, Elisha, to name just a couple, lots of people throughout the scriptures perform miracles. We wouldn’t be surprised that other rabbis would be performing miracles, but it’s not like it’s an everyday occurrence, but it’s also not like Jesus is the only guy out there doing miracles.

When a rabbi does a miracle—sometimes we think Jesus does miracles solely because he wants to help people. Don’t mishear me. Jesus does want to help people. We’re told that Jesus is moved by compassion. We’re told that Jesus heals people all the time, but do not think that Jesus healed every single person that he ever came across that ever had anything that needed to be healed. Miraculous healing is actually incredibly problematic, because the moment that Jesus heals one paralytic, what’s the problem, Brent? If you have a brother who’s paralyzed.

Brent: What about my brother?

Marty: What about my brother? What about every single paralytic that could ever be brought to him? Quit getting this idea in your head that Jesus was running around healing people. Healing is problematic, because the moment that I don’t get healed, what about me? Healing is also problematic because it assumes that that’s what God is most concerned about, is healing all of our problems. We should know by now with just a little bit of reflection and thought, that’s not what God’s utmost concern is. Jesus didn’t come here to heal and fix everybody’s problem. In fact, sometimes he gets quite exasperated with the whole thing. “Do I really have to keep dealing with you people?” At one point, he says, “How long must I be with you?”

The reason that a rabbi would do a healing is because it helps him teach whatever teaching point he’s actually teaching. Miracles are problematic unless they’re helping the rabbi make his point and complete his teaching. When these people start digging through the roof, I imagine Jesus either just going on and teaching without blinking, or I picture him stopping and just staring up at the ceiling for an awkward two hours as he thinks to himself probably, “How am I going to use this moment to help me make my point?”

I wonder how much he knew. I wonder what he saw. I wonder if he saw the guy, the paralytic at the door and then he saw the guys start climbing up on the roof and Jesus went, “Oh, this is going to be perfect.” The reason that Jesus heals and we’ll show this in another place later in our teaching, we’ll show how Jesus does this, and why he does this with his healings. This healing is going to somehow connect with whatever it is he’s teaching in that house. We’re not told exactly what he’s teaching in this house, but I think we’re going to get a hint of what he’s teaching in this house by what happens in this story.

I would’ve just loved to have been there and seen how he handled this moment, but apparently they don’t stop him because they actually dig a hole in the roof. Go ahead and pick up where we left off. They lowered this guy through the roof.

Brent: When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Marty: Okay. By the way, what I love about this is three things. The first thing is, I don’t even know about the paralytic’s faith. I’m never told about the paralytic’s faith. Whose faith am I told about, Brent?

Brent: The faith of the four friends.

Marty: When Jesus—read that verse again.

Brent: When Jesus saw their faith—

Marty: By the way, that phrase is in all three Gospels, which leads me to the second thing that I love. What did Jesus do to their faith?

Brent: “When he saw it.”

Marty: He saw it. Faith is something you can see. Whatever faith is, faithfulness is faith in action. He saw their faith. Matthew, Mark, Luke, all say when Jesus saw their faith. He said to the man. The third thing I love about this: A) I’m not told anything about the paralytic’s faith, only the friends. B) I’m told that the faith of his friends is something I can see, and C) the thing that I love about this story is just his response.

Can you imagine being the paralytic? You’re probably sitting there like, “Oh guys, would you not? This is really awkward. Could you not lower me through the roof?” I don’t know what he’s feeling. I’m not told, but he gets down there. Can you imagine finally being lowered, hitting the ground, having Jesus look at you and go, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” What would your response to that be?

Brent: You notice how I’m not standing.

Marty: [laughs] Thanks, Jesus, but that’s not really what I was looking for.

Brent: Okay. Here’s a question. We talked about when a rabbi is teaching, he sits down to teach.

Marty: Sure.

Brent: What about everybody else? Will the other people in the house be sitting down around him or were they standing around him? How does that work?

Marty: Especially in a setting like this, they’re going to be sitting. I reserve the right to be wrong, but I think they’re going to all be sitting. This house, and we’ve looked at the construction. You’ve been with me at Chorazin and even the one that we showed a picture of in the presentation. When you sit in these homes, they often have very low ceilings, especially if it’s a house large enough for a lot of people to gather in, because that means that they have a very low ceiling because they’re having to span that gap with a very low archway. You usually have to duck to get into the room and then sit down to be in it. Especially in this setting, they’re probably sitting, but if a rabbi sits, you all sit. You’re going to be sitting as you listen to that teaching.

Brent: Well, it does say in the next verse, “Now some teachers of the law were sitting there,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone.

Marty: It doesn’t necessarily mean, but it’s a good observation. I would say it’s indicative of what would have been happening there. This guy gets lowered and Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven,” which I imagined him going, “Not helpful, but thanks.” Again, Jesus is not driven by just fixing this guy’s plight. I think he knows where this is headed. I know he’s got a plan up his sleeve. His teaching must be on what, Brent?

Brent: On forgiveness.

Marty: On forgiveness. He gets lowered through the roof, and his statement has nothing to do with the guy’s condition. His statement has to do with what his teaching is on. He must be teaching on forgiveness. Let’s find out some more. Go ahead and keep reading.

Brent: Now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Marty: There’s that little explanation. By the way, the reason I chose Mark is Mark gives a little bit more explanation for his Roman audience, which is good for our Greco-Roman listeners. It explains a little bit more. You can look at Matthew—[Mark] expounds on that a little bit more, because it tells you what their point is when they say—in Matthew, it just says, “This guy’s blaspheming,” but in Mark, it tells you why he’s blaspheming. He’s claiming to forgive something.

Even in this first-century world, it would be different if somebody came to me and said—if I went to Brent and said, “Brent, I’ve wronged you, will you forgive me?” That’s not Jesus’s statement. This paralytic has not wronged Jesus. This is not interpersonal forgiveness. This is, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” which makes the religious leaders go, “Whoa.” Do you remember what our conversation was, Brent, about the Lord’s Prayer back in the Sermon on the Mount? What was the thunderbolt point of the sermon?

Brent: That we’re forgiving the sins of those who sin against us.

Marty: We’re engaging in the work of forgiveness, something that no Amidah prayer had. Here’s this theme, it’s showing up again in Jesus’s teaching. He’s claiming, “I’m going to forgive this guy,” and the Pharisees are going, “Whoa, you don’t get to do that. Only God gets to do that.”

Brent: Just to point out, in the Matthew narrative, the Lord’s Prayer portion was in Matthew 6 or 7, and this equivalent portion from Mark that we’re reading shows up in Matthew 9. In context, this has already been a conversation that’s been ongoing for Jesus.

Marty: Yes, absolutely.

Brent: Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier? To say to this paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up, take your mat and walk”? I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

Marty: Now, stop. That statement there, Jesus says, “I can say your sins are forgiven, and you’re all worked up because of who you think I’m saying that I am.” Jesus says, “What is easier? To say that or to actually heal this guy? So that you might know,” this is where I think we get the indication of what he was teaching on. I think he was teaching on forgiveness, but I think the stunning thing about what he was teaching on is who he was, who he is, and forgiveness, because there is a huge teaching in Jesus’s day.

When Jesus says Son of Man, he means one of two things. When Jesus says, “I’m the son of man,” he either means simply, “I’m a human being,” and there’s a huge scholarly debate about what he means whenever he says Son of Man, because he can’t be just simply saying—like in Ezekiel. Ezekiel says, “The LORD said to me, son of man...” All that God is saying to Ezekiel when he calls him the son of man is “You’re just a guy, you’re just a human. You’re just any old guy, just a son of man.”

Sometimes when Jesus says Son of Man, in some Gospels, it appears that he simply is saying, “Listen, I’m just a man. I’m a man doing human things.” Not to take away from his deity, but, “I’m a man, I’m functioning as a human.” God became a human to show us what humanity looked like.

Brent: That’s what Philippians says. He set the deity aside, he is functioning fully as a human.

Marty: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, again, we’re in Session 3. I always get nervous when I’m recommending Rob Bell because everybody’s going to wig out. We’re in Session 3 and if we’re all surprised by this point, we just haven’t been listening. There’s an episode of The RobCast. It’s going to be the last “Jesus H Christ” episode that he did.

Brent: I haven’t quite got there yet.

Marty: You haven’t quite got there yet.

Brent: I’m three episodes behind right now.

Marty: The last one that he did of the episode, he talked about this idea of Son of Man. You can listen to that to find out more about that usage of Son of Man. The other thing that Jesus could mean, and I personally think he’s using this more than most people think. I think I would actually disagree with Rob, which there you go. Every now and then I do that. I think I would actually disagree with Rob on how often Jesus is referencing which usage of the Son of Man, because sometimes when he says Son of Man, he is referencing what book, Brent. We talked about Son of Man in a book.

Brent: The book of Daniel .

Marty: Book of Daniel. I think Daniel, just as we discussed at the end of Session 2, was a book that has recently been penned. That theme of “I saw one coming like a Son of Man.” I can’t remember how much we talked about in the book of Daniel episode, which we could also link in the show notes, by the way, the book of Daniel episode. In that episode, we talked about how the central image, there’s this double chiasm in Daniel, and one of the central images is this one like the Son of Man coming in the clouds.

The rabbinical conversation was looking at Daniel, and they were looking at the Roman world around them. In the Roman world around them, they were saying, “Why is it?” It was one thing when we weren’t obeying God, when we lived in disobedience and God sent Babylon to take us off into captivity. The rabbis said, the Pharisees said, the Jewish leaders said, “That makes sense.” It makes sense that God would punish us for disobedience.

How come when we came back from Babylon, and we had synagogue, and we’re devoted to righteousness, and we’re trying to walk correctly, how come we’re still suffering under the boot of the Greeks and the Romans? That doesn’t make any sense. What about that injustice? The rabbis went to that, what I believe was a freshly penned Book of Daniel, those rabbis went back to that, and they looked at that—I should say “sages,” rabbis don’t exist at this point—the sages went back to that book, and they said, “Look, it’s the Son of Man.” If I’m going to say Son of Man in Hebrew, Brent, what do I say? Ben—ben would be son, ben is the word for son. What is the word for man?

Brent: Ish?

Marty: No. It is a word for man. That’s a word for male.

Brent: Adam.

Marty: Adam. Ben adam is “son of man.” Literally, it’s son of what? Another way you could read that is son of what or who?

Brent: Son of Adam.

Marty: Son of Adam. The rabbis, the sages went, “Has anybody ever suffered injustice before?” Who was the first person in all of history to suffer for doing the right thing, Brent?

Brent: Abel.

Marty: Abel brought a good offering and he died for it, and the sages went, “Oh, Abel was the first person to suffer like this. This kind of suffering has been going on throughout the ages.” Daniel talks about the Son of Man, ben adam, coming to stand—it wasn’t really ben adam, because it’s half-written in Aramaic—but then the other half is written in Hebrew. Ben adam comes to stand before the ancient of days, and he’s going to open up that book right in the middle of the chiasm. We’re told he’s going to open up the book and justice is going to reign.

The sages said one day—did they believe this literally? Probably not. “One day Abel is going to come back. Abel is going to come back in the clouds and Abel is going to render justice for all the injustice that has ever been suffered for doing the right thing, all that injustice. The Son of Man, the son of Adam is going to come back and he’s going to render justice, he’s going to pronounce judgment, and everybody’s going to get their comeuppance.”

This is what many people in the Jewish world of the Greco-Romans were yearning for. Those people that were looking for a Messiah, that were looking for a messianic age. If they were looking for that, they were hanging on these words from Daniel. What is it that Jesus is teaching? Read that statement of Jesus, that last sentence again, one more time, Brent.

Brent: I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

Marty: Ray taught me, what does Jesus say there? “I want you to know that the Son of Adam has authority,” he has the authority, he has the capability to forgive sins on earth. My rabbi, Ray, taught me that his Rabbi, an actual Rabbi at Yeshiva, told him this is the only time in Jewish history where anybody has had the audacity to suggest that when Abel comes back, he’s going to look at Cain, he’s going to look him in the eyeballs, and he’s going to say, “I forgive you,” rather than, “Here’s what you got coming.”

Imagine Jesus in this home talking about forgiveness, talking about the power of forgiveness, and imagine his audience saying, “I don’t want forgiveness, I want justice.” Imagine Jesus saying, “What if Abel comes back and he doesn’t render justice? What if Abel comes back and actually he chooses to forgive because that’s what God’s up to in the world.” Then all of a sudden these four guys start digging a hole in the roof and Jesus sits there and he waits. Then the guy gets lowered to the ground and Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.” The spiritual leaders are all worked up because who does this guy think he is? Only God can do that.

Jesus says, “So that you might know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins.” Jesus says, “You are right. Who can do this and who can heal this guy but somebody who’s sent by God. In some cases I think he’s trying to even say I am able. I am the Son of Man you’re looking for and I haven’t come to render justice. I’ve come to bring forgiveness and wholeness. The paralytic. I don’t mean any offense by this but the paralytic is a prop. He’s just a tool in Jesus’s teaching. He heals him and then sends him on his way. Notice, go ahead and finish out our story here, Brent.

Brent: I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God saying we have never seen anything like this.

Marty: In Mark’s Gospel he’s writing to Romans and he talks about how amazed they are. How entertained they are. I want you to jump over to Matthew. I want you to read the closing verse to Matthew’s version of the story and watch what they hear. Remember this is a Jewish version. Jew writing into a Jewish audience. It’s not going to be about their amazement. Notice what they pull out of Jesus’s teaching and tell me if you think it goes along the lines with what I’m suggesting here.

Brent: When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praised God who had given such authority to man.

Marty: What’s the additional plug there?

Brent: That God had given authority to man.

Marty: God is inviting us, and so I think there’s also that Son of Man usage about humanity. Abel has come to teach us how to forgive. What did we say Matthew’s agenda was, Brent?

Brent: The mumzer.

Marty: The mamzer. The outsider. The person who doesn’t belong. I think Matthew is saying, or what all the Jews there understood was that if this is the Son of Man, if this is Abel and Abel is coming to forgive sins, then that means that I get to engage—we’re back to the Sermon on the Mount. We’re back to that same idea in the sermon on the mount where Jesus is saying you have to engage the work of forgiveness. They’re going, “We’ve never heard this before. You’re telling me I have to join God in the redemptive work of forgiveness in the world?” I think this is what’s blowing their mind. Let’s try to knock out a couple of quick stories here, Brent. Let’s keep reading.

Brent: All right, staying in Matthew now. As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

Marty: When we talked about Matthew and his agenda, we talked about this story, because he’s a tax collector, he’s an outsider. He’s definitely a mamzer. The Gospels tell the calling of the disciples in different ways but Matthew puts it here right at this story. He says, “Jesus came, he called me and I dropped everything and I went.”

Brent: While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.

Marty: Oh, that’s a big deal. Matthew just got a second chance. Who does he call to come sit with the rabbi and have dinner?

Brent: All of his tax collector and sinner friends.

Marty: All of his tax collector and sinner buddies. “Boy, if this is for me…” I wonder if Matthew went and said, “Rabbi, is this for everybody else too?” I wonder if Jesus said, “Yes.” Matthew said, “Can I throw a dinner [party] and invite all of my friends?” I picture Jesus going, “Absolutely. Let’s do that.” Of course the moment he does that, all the religious people get upset. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Go ahead and keep reading.

Brent: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Marty: Remember, a meal says what, Brent, can you remember? What does a meal say?

Brent: That everything is good between us.

Marty: If I eat a meal with you, that means you and I are in the right relationship. If a Jewish leader does it, you get this impression of, “Do you condone? Are you condoning who they are and what they do?” Jesus says, “Absolutely. I’m condoning who they are. I sit with them because that’s what God wants to do. I sit with them. I restore relationship. That’s what I’m here to do,” but of course, the religious folks, just as they are today, are not happy. Go ahead.

Brent: On hearing this, Jesus said it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick, but go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.

Marty: The Pharisees confront the disciples, they confront Jesus. Jesus comes back to them and he does what? He quotes…?

Brent: Hosea.

Marty: He quotes Hosea. He quotes text. He pulls out texts because they’re Pharisees. They’re very well trained in their text. When he quotes this, this is what’s called a remez, I don’t know how much we’ve talked about remez up to this point. Whenever a Rabbi or a teacher or an author deliberately quotes Text, it is called a hint or a remez, which is what the word is in Hebrew. That remez is designed to link you back to the Text. He’s not just telling the Pharisees, “Go learn what this means. I desire mercy not sacrifice.” What is he saying, Brent? You know this well enough. You can talk to this.

Brent: Whatever Hosea is talking about in the context of this little piece that he pulls out of Hosea, that’s what they’re supposed to pick up on.

Marty: He’s saying go back to this part of Hosea and read it again because you’re not reading it correctly. You need to learn that lesson all over again. If you have it, do you have it? I just threw you a curveball, Brent.

Brent: I can pull it up.

Marty: Read the context.

Brent: What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets. I killed you with the words of my mouth. Then my judgments go forth like the sun. For I desire mercy not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.

As at Etam, they have broken the covenant, they were unfaithful to me there. Gilead is a city of evildoers stained with footprints of blood. As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests. They murder on the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes. I have seen a horrible thing in Israel. There Ephraim is given to prostitution. Israel is defiled.

Marty: There’s this reference here to the disobedience of Israel and how they don’t listen to his commands. I can’t help but wonder if the reason that Matthew put this story here is it immediately comes after the story about forgiveness and people wanting judgment.

Those same Pharisees in the previous story were like, “But I don’t want forgiveness. I want judgment,” yet the very next story is, “But you don’t understand why I judged you in Hosea. I judged you because you wouldn’t listen to me, because I don’t want religious piety. I don’t want empty obedience. What I want is mercy. That’s the whole reason we got into this all the way back with Abraham (in Session 1), to bless all nations. Why did I put you at the crossroads of the earth (Session 2)? Because I want you to be a blessing to all nations. I want you to show the world what my love, my compassion, my mercy, my forgiveness looks like and instead you’re trying to show yourself and me empty piety. I don’t want piety. I don’t want sacrifice. I want mercy. I want mishpat. I want justice. I want righteousness. I want tzedakah. That’s what I want.”

Again, they understand that because the moment he quotes Hosea, they don’t miss that. They immediately start going, “Okay, what’s the context of that quote.” They can recite Hosea in their heads, to each other as they stand there and they can unpack, “Oh, he thinks we totally missed God’s mission. I see what he’s saying.” He of course is saying, “I’m fulfilling—” We talked about fulfilling. Jesus would say, “I’m fulfilling Hosea.” What was the reference?

Brent: The direct reference is Hosea 6:6.

Marty: Jesus could say to them, he could look at them and say, “I’m fulfilling Hosea 6, you’re abolishing Hosea 6. You miss the whole point of what the prophets came to tell us. I’m showing you what the prophets came to tell us by eating with task collectors and sinners and outsiders. By restoring them to right relationship. I am doing the thing that God sent us all to do and you are missing the point.” Of course they as Pharisees completely get it. They understand the language that’s being tossed back and forth.

Brent: The line in Hosea, “As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests.” Would the Pharisees have identified with that line as priests or… ?

Marty: Not as priests—and I was thinking that too. It would’ve been even better if priests would’ve been sitting there, but priests and Pharisees are definitely two completely separate groups of people. That same line, I think, if he was staying in Jerusalem, talking to priests would’ve hit them just as poignantly as it hits the Pharisees in other ways, but yes, it’s a good question. Give me one more story, Brent. Let’s do one more. It’s a long podcast. We’ve got one more in us.

Brent: Before we move on though, I had one thing I wanted to point out. The Pharisees saw what Jesus was doing, eating with the tax collectors and sinners and they addressed his disciples, but then Jesus comes over and addresses the Pharisees. I thought that was interesting

Marty: I wonder how that exchange actually happened. Did Jesus overhear them? I’m a big believer that Jesus doesn’t function with this, what I call “God goggles.” I don’t believe Jesus was ever supersonically hearing, because he’s God, a conversation or even in the last story where it says he knew what they were thinking in his spirit. I don’t think that’s any different than when I know what you’re thinking sometimes in your spirit as I look at your facial expressions and you shifting your weight in your chair, and I’m thinking, “Okay, Brent didn’t like that comment so much.” I can read things. I can be aware of things. I think that’s what Jesus is doing.

I wonder sometimes how that—did the disciples listen to the Pharisees and then come over to Jesus and be like, “Hey, Jesus, so why did you do this?” Then Jesus goes and talks to the Pharisees. Is there more to it? I’ve often wondered about some of those details myself.

Brent: Because the disciples don’t really have authority to speak on behalf of their rabbi, right?

Marty: At this point in Matthew, they really don’t. They can comment on what they’ve been taught. They can comment on what they understand, what they believe they understand. Really, I think it’s the rabbi’s trying to catch disciples. In some instances, I don’t know if that can be fair, it could be Pharisees trying to catch these disciples in a bad spot and trap them. You know how they’re always trying to trap the rabbi.

Well, one of the ways you can do that is by trapping your disciples and making them represent the rabbi incorrectly. It could be some of that, and it could just be as simple as they’re standing there going, “Hey, he’s busy. Tell me what’s going on over here. Who does he think he is?” I actually saw a meme the other day that said—or it was a tweet from one of the people I follow that said, “For all the people who have told everyone except the pastor that they haven’t gotten a call from the pastor, we pray.” We will often deal with everybody but the person we’re critiquing. We’ll talk to everybody else. Maybe it’s just as simple as our humanity, but there you go.

Brent: Reading on then. Then John’s disciples came and asked him, this is John the Baptist, right?

Marty: Yes, absolutely. Now it’s no longer Pharisees, it’s John the Baptist. Now we’re not nearly the opposition.

Brent: How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast? Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, then they will fast.”

Marty: There’s a few different references here. Well, first of all, there are levels to Jewish hermeneutics. We’ll talk about this more later. The very first thing is just p’shat. P’shat means surface-level reading and then there is remez. Remez is the hint we talked about. The remez is going to lead you to what’s called the drash. The drash is the truth. It’s like a treasure buried in the story. Tell me, Brent, will the drash ever be different than the p’shat? Will it ever go in opposite directions?

Brent: Oh, well, they should line up.

Marty: They should always line up. You’re never going to read something in p’shat and then find out what the rabbi means is totally opposite once you get to the drash. It’s only going to take p’shat and it’s going to open it up. It’s going to widen it up. It’s going to make it full of color. It’s going to make it deeper and more profound, but drash is never going to be like some secret code that unlocks some different lesson. It’s just going to unlock deeper levels of the same lesson.

On the p’shat level, let’s just read this for what it is. Jesus is just saying, “Listen, why don’t my disciples fast? Because I’m the bridegroom. You don’t fast when you’re at a party. I am the guy. I am Jesus, the Son of Man character. You don’t fast while I’m here, you throw the party while I’m here, because I won’t always be here. Trust me, there’s going to come a day when we fast.” That’s just the p’shat level—I’m not the person and this isn’t the time to be fasting.

When you’re talking to a rabbi, you always assume that there’s a remez. If you were to go to, say, biblegateway.com, I love to teach my students how to do this for themselves, not just listen to my podcast, that would be lame. I want you to know how to do this yourself. If you go to biblegateway.com and you just put in something like “bridegroom” and just search for it, you would notice that bridegroom comes up sometimes. There’s a handful of times, a couple a handful of times. You could look through. You could scour—remember, this is the beauty of disciples having their whole Text memorized. Do they have to go to biblegateway.com, Brent?

Brent: No.

Marty: No. Luckily we do. If the disciples knew that we had biblegateway.com, they would roll over in their graves. They would be like, “You have got to be kidding me. You don’t have to memorize this?! Wait, you have your Bibles printed? You can have multiple copies in your house and you have an internet where you get to search for keywords? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Because they had to do this all in their mind. They had to biblegateway.com their brain.

Brent: Biblegateway-dot-brain.

Marty: I like that. They had to find all those usages in their own memorization. We get to go to biblegateway.com and then you’re going through all those usages. You’re going, “What is it that Jesus should be…?” and you’re looking, you’re looking, you’re looking. I think you find your best options here, personally, in Jeremiah. You have three different references to God saying, “I’m going to take away,” one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one towards the end of Jeremiah.

I think it’s 7, 16, and 25. I believe God says in Jeremiah chapters—those are chapters, by the way—Chapter 7, Chapter 16, and Chapter 25. God says, “I will remove from Jerusalem, I will remove from Judah, the joy and the sound of bride and bridegroom,” basically as a prophetic utterance of there’s going to be no joyful weddings. Destruction is coming. In those references is this. When Jesus calls back to this, and I think they’re going to think, Jeremiah, you hear Jesus saying, “Listen, there’s coming a day when you’re going to experience destruction.”

He’s going to say that later in his ministry. He’s going to talk about the destruction of Jerusalem. He’s going to tell people. He’s going to warn people, destruction is coming. Jesus looks at the disciples of John saying, “Listen, there will come destruction, and there will come a time to fast, but it’s not right now. We’re not there right now. Right now the bridegroom is here.” What I love about that is if you pair that with the story of the paralytic, they’re looking for destruction on the Romans.

Jesus is saying, actually, you’re going to experience what we experienced in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures, you’re going to experience, actually, the opposite. Destruction isn’t coming for the Romans. Destruction is coming for us. Destruction is coming for Jerusalem. That’s what’s on the horizon. Not rescue, but destruction, exile, and captivity. Go ahead and read the next few verses there, Brent, let’s finish this out.

Brent: No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst. The wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.

Marty: Now we have another one of these teachings, these cryptic rabbinical teachings about old wine and new wineskins. I’m trying to teach our listeners, we’re just introducing a concept, we haven’t nailed it, we haven’t polished it up and we’re just dropping seeds and introducing our listeners to the fact that it’s everything that Jesus says. Where is it located, Brent? Jesus says…?

Brent: In the Text.

Marty: It’s in the Text! If I can get my listeners, my students, to start thinking that way. Whenever Jesus opens his mouth, he’s talking about the Text. He’s referencing a text. He’s not just giving a pearl of wisdom. He’s talking about an Old Testament text. If I can get us to think that way and ask that question every time we look at a teaching of Jesus, I have won. That is #winning for me and BEMA. We want to ask that question. First, let’s deal with what level? What’s the first level, Brent?

Brent: P’shat.

Marty: Let’s just take p’shat. Let’s just start on the surface level. It’s always a great place to start. What is Jesus saying? He just got done saying, “Listen, I know that you think you should be fasting but I’m the bridegroom. I’m here. There’s going to come a time to fast. This isn’t it. Right now we’re not fasting.” Then Jesus is going to move on and say, and I realize this is a new thing, and new things are hard to grasp.

You can’t force new ideas into an old worldview. You can’t take this old, whether, if it’s John the Baptist’s disciples, Essene worldview. You can’t take a Pharisaic worldview. You can’t take any of these worldviews that think they have it figured out and take a new idea and cram it in there and have it work. New ideas are only going to work for people that are yearning for new ideas and new wineskins, people that are humble enough to go, “This system isn’t working for me,” which is what I love about BEMA.

A lot of people bump into BEMA or maybe some of our listeners have tried to give the podcast out to people. They listen to it and they go, “This guy is nuts.” They think, “This guy is crazy. Why are you giving us this?” I’ve heard these conversations. I’ve had a couple of examples come up just in the last month or two of, “I love your podcast. I went and I tried to give it to these people and they just wanted nothing to do with you. They called you a false teacher.”

Because BEMA is great for people that are like, “This isn’t working for me. There’s something off. There’s something amiss. I know that there’s more.” BEMA is like a drink of cool water or breath of fresh air. Maybe I’m being too arrogant with that, but that’s what I hear. That’s what I get comments from all the time from our listeners. Then there are people who aren’t looking for new. The old system works just fine for them. They’re not in a conundrum. They’re not sitting there going, “This doesn’t work for me.”

They’re looking at their faith going, “This works exactly as it ought to.” If you try to put new wine in old wineskins, it just doesn’t work. That’s the p’shat level. If we’re going to look for remez-es, what kind of things are we going to look for, Brent? What’s the things that stand out?

Brent: We got all kinds of keywords.

Marty: Yes, exactly. You are looking for keywords. I like that phrase.

Brent: We’ve got cloth and garments, patches, tears, wine, wineskins, new and old.

Marty: Okay, yes. Again, this isn’t a quick one and done. We are going to shortcut it for the sake of the podcast, but you’ve got to dig into biblegetway.com. You’ve got to do all these keyword searches. You’ve got to find the thing where you’re like—usually, you’ll find one where all of a sudden it clicks and you go, “Oh my goodness, I think that’s what Jesus is calling back to,” because of how perfectly it fits the context of his teaching. Again, as I start looking through my word searches, the one that stands out to me is wineskins. That’s just a really odd thing to talk about. Not odd as in it never shows up in the Bible, but you don’t talk about wineskins every single time you turn the page of the Bible.

I wonder if that shows up anywhere. Well, in fact, when I go to Luke, I get a few different options. I get a handful of options. I get a story about Joshua, I get a reference in Job. There’s some good possibilities there, maybe that’s what Jesus is talking about. We could argue about that, but I also get another reference too. Lo and behold, what prophet do you think, Brent?

Brent: I’m guessing Jeremiah.

Marty: Jeremiah. The last reference we talked about was in 7, 16, and 25. Interesting, there’s a wineskin reference in Jeremiah 17 right after Jeremiah 16. In the middle of the wineskin and the bridegroom reference, there’s a story about, wouldn’t you know it? A linen belt. An old garment that Jeremiah takes and buries into the ground until it becomes old. So you have the old and the new, you have bridegrooms, garments, and wineskins. Again, I think you have the same condemnation that is consistent through all of our stories here, which is, if Matthew’s agenda is the agenda of what, Brent?

Brent: The mumzer.

Marty: The mamzer. If Matthew’s agenda is the agenda of the mamzer, all three of these stories align in Jesus’s p’shat teachings, the remez-es that he is using, and the drash-es that lie behind his teaching, all land in the critique of—not just Pharisees, maybe even Essenes—but all kinds of Jewish thinking to say, “If you are not looking out for the mamzer, you’re missing the point.” The point has always been mercy, not sacrifice. The point has always been blessing all nations. The point has always been justice and compassion and righteousness. You are looking for the wrong righteousness and God’s judgment is coming because of it.

I love to walk through these stories and just show how that thread of mamzer-ness and then that thread of condemning a false religion, I think Jeremiah would call it. There is a false kind of piety. Sometimes well-intentioned, but I think Matthew’s agenda is, but if you are not looking out for the outsider, you are missing the point. It may be well-intentioned, but you are still on the wrong path. You are still abolishing the law and the prophets. How about we get about the work of fulfilling it by taking care of all those on the outside.

Brent: All right. I think that does it for this episode.

Marty: Forgiveness, dang it. I just want to keep coming back to that. Son of Man and forgiveness.

Brent: Forgiveness is kind of a big deal.

Marty: If we are going to take care of the outsiders, apparently we are going to have to be really good at forgiveness.

Brent: All right. Well, if you have any questions about what we’ve been talking about, if you have any hints that you found in the Text that you want to share with us or you want to ask us about, you can get a hold of us on Twitter. Marty’s at @martysolomon. I’m at @eibcb. We’ve got a BEMA Discipleship Facebook page, as well—a great place to get some discussion going, get some prompts from Marty a couple times a week. You can find more details about this show at bemadiscipleship.com. Thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.