BEMA 95: Abolish or Fulfill

Transcription Status

26 Jul 23 — Initial public release

19 Jan 23 — Transcript approved for release

Abolish or Fulfill

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today we look at the next few verses in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus speaks of the relationship between his teaching and the teachings of the Hebrew scriptures.

Marty Solomon: Yes, siree. Every verse, we said. Every verse.

Brent: This one’s a really good one to talk about. I just feel like this is maybe one of the most misunderstood pieces of Jesus’s teaching.

Marty: Yes. This is a good one. This is definitely a good one. Maybe just to remind ourselves where we’ve been, we’ve talking about Matthew. We’ve been using Matthew, what has his agenda been?

Brent: He’s talking about the mumzer/mamzer or the outcast, the unwanted.

Marty: The normal, typical status—the religious status quo is not accurate to what the Kingdom of God looks like, Matthew says. The Kingdom of God is much more about the people that we don’t think are in it than we realize. That is his agenda. While we’re here, let’s just review. What was Mark? What was his agenda?

Brent: Mark was the Roman Gospel. He’s writing to the Romans.

Marty: Writing to the Romans. He himself was—he wasn’t Roman.

Brent: He was a Jew.

Marty: He was a Jew writing to Romans. Excellent. Matthew is Jew to Jew, and then Mark is Jew to Romans.

Brent: This is sounding very corporate-y, all of a sudden: B2B, B2C, Jew to Jew.

[laughter]

Marty: Luke, who was Luke?

Brent: Luke was writing an “ordered” Gospel.

Marty: Possibly a parashah companion. With, let’s see here, parashah companion, and he was, if we have a Jew writing to Jews and a Jew writing to Romans, Luke would be?

Brent: Jew-ish writing to Jews.

Marty: Proselyte would be the word that we want to use. Proselyte, convert. In their eyes, as Jew as they come, once he’s converted, he is as if he was born by blood. We debate, but I suggested Goulder’s work—a Jewish audience. Then we said, John, what do we call John?

Brent: That’s good we’re reviewing because I grafted.

Marty: Grafted. Yes. Got a tree. We have been Romans 11 which I haven’t talked about yet, but we have been grafted into this tree or should I say Gentiles have been grafted into this tree. Those are little reviews. We’re using Matthew, the agenda of a mamzer. We started there, we started in his genealogy. We saw it in the Christmas story and then as the Gospel gets set up, I don’t think that agenda gets lost. Especially towards the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus, right before he begins to speak publicly, you have these crowds because he starts to bring Kingdom. John the Baptist baptizes him. He is tested in the desert.

John, the Baptist is arrested, and then Jesus takes up this mantle of who is possibly his rabbi, and he says repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is here. As he brings this Kingdom, not just the announcement, but he’s also actually bringing Kingdom with him. All kinds of people are showing up. Remind us Brent of this group that shows up.

Brent: They were from everywhere.

Marty: The typical people?

Brent: No, no. All the people who don’t belong in the triangle.

Marty: Did it include the typical people?

Brent: Oh yes. They were there too.

Marty: You’ve got everybody, but—you could have people you expected, but you also were surprised by everybody else. You were like, “Wait a minute!” In response to this, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes to a mountainside, a certain mountainside. He sits down and says he sees the crowds and in response to this diverse group of people, all responding to the Kingdom. We suggested that his disciples were probably a little taken aback, a little confused, a little uneasy. I think you used the word uncomfortable.

Jesus calls them to him, and he says, listen. He starts the sermon with these pronouncements that we call the beatitudes. All these people that you think are not in? God’s favor is with them. The Kingdom of God is for them. Everything is different than you think it is. This fits Matthew’s agenda and is apparently a central hinge point of Jesus’s teaching here as Matthew tells us in the Sermon on the Mount.

He makes these pronouncements and says those people—the Kingdom of God is for them and the Kingdom of God is for those people. The Kingdom of God is for those people and those people and those people. If you go take this message, and if you believe in this Kingdom and you want to start bringing this Kingdom, you yourself are going to be persecuted. Jesus says, “But don’t you worry because this is the Kingdom, and because of this, you will be the salt and the light.” You will be the hope. We said hope in the last episode, or “the hope of the world,” because you’re bringing Kingdom.

You’re bringing shalom to a world in chaos. This world thinks it understands shalom and it’s not working. Of course, the Roman way is chaos, but even this religious way, it’s not shalom. It’s just its own version of chaos. If you come to bring this shalom to the chaos, you are going to take it in the chin, but you’re also going to bring hope and that’s what you’re coming here to do. From there we pick up where we left off. How about you read, we’re going to do four verses today Brent. That’s how big our passage is going to be four verses.

Brent: Short and sweet.

Marty: Short and sweet. Matthew 5:17-20.

Brent: Big discussion.

Marty: Big discussion, small passage.

Brent: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them for truly I tell you until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Therefore, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Marty: All right. Now let’s just start by explaining some context here. This phrase: “I have come to fulfill the law.” Haven’t come to abolish, I’ve come to fulfill it. Now, when you are being raised in your Christian worldview, Brent, what did that term mean to you? Jesus came to fulfill the law. What does that mean?

Brent: I guess I ignored the part about the law altogether because I always thought of that as fulfillment of future-telling prophecy.

Marty: Absolutely. That’s actually a great point. The way we typically talk about it’s not even about the law at all. It’s about prophecy. We just use the law as this general blanket term to talk about the Old Testament. I remember when I was growing up in the Christian world, what was communicated to me in this discussion was that Jesus had accomplished—there were all these things, and it was sometimes said a few different ways. Maybe it was prophecies that Jesus needed to fulfill, but sometimes it was just like God gave human beings the law and he was expecting somebody to do it perfectly and none of us could because we were all dirty, rotten sinners.

Jesus came and accomplished every rule that God laid out. Which by the way, just as a P.S., doesn’t even work because Jesus wasn’t a woman so he can’t even fulfill the part of the law that talks about menstrual cycles. That can’t even logically be true. No human being can do all the parts of the law because all the parts of the law don’t even apply to you. But it was communicated to me almost like the law was a video game and with 613 commandments and there were 613 levels to beat in this video game and Jesus came and he did it. He beat all 600. He lived a perfect life. He was able to defeat all 613 levels of this video game and he fulfilled it. He accomplished it. He beat the game and for that reason, we don’t even have to play it anymore.

Brent: Do you think the first 30 years of his life was like working through the different levels and then the last three were like a speed run like I’m going to do all 613 in three years?

Marty: Right now, all I can hear is Mario Bros theme music and then like getting the star, the little magic star that makes you invincible and just like watching Jesus run through Torah.

[music]

Marty: What was I talking about before we got onto that wonderful little gem? That whole Jesus came to defeat, beat the game for us. He came to beat the law to fulfill it and accomplish it all. This assumption that if he did like somehow we wouldn’t have to fall. I don’t even know where that idea necessarily even comes from. It doesn’t even make logical sense to me, but that’s certainly not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus, the mitzvah—that’s the Hebrew word for good deeds or good works or commandments—you could say the mitzvot as plural.

The mitzvah is not a game show. It’s not a challenge to be accepted and completed. It’s not like going to your local burger joint where it’s like, eat this whole burger and get your meal for free. That’s not what Torah is. This idea, we need to adjust it. We need to adjust it as we always do to its original context because when a rabbi talks about fulfilling and abolishing, he means something in particular. When a rabbi says he’s fulfilling Torah, it means that he is interpreting it correctly. Now, that’s bigger than we even hear it in our language because interpretation is not just about mental, intellectual, theological academic explanation. That’s merely a part of interpretation in the rabbinic world.

Yes, you have to be able to look at the law, interpret it correctly, do the legal, they would say the law, but the legal work of interpreting the law. Then in order to fulfill it, you actually have to walk that interpretation out. Your behavior—they would call it your walk. We’ve talked about the desert before, your walk. Your halach is the Hebrew word. Your walk has to match your interpretation. First of all, you have to interpret it correctly. My words are failing me here. You have to interpret it intellectually correctly, and then you have to back it up with your behavior and your obedience in your walk, and then you are fulfilling it.

If you don’t do that process, it’s called abolishing. You are abolishing Torah. Now, you can abolish Torah by interpreting it intellectually incorrectly. Because if you interpret it incorrectly, it doesn’t matter how you live it out, you’ve got the wrong interpretation, to begin with. You can also abolish it by interpreting it the right way, but not walking it out correctly. Either option, you’re not fulfilling Torah. To fulfill Torah means to interpret Torah with your mind and your heart and then to walk it out with your life.

When Jesus says I have come to fulfill Torah, he’s saying “I have come to take the books of Moses, the teachings of Moses.” Yes, I think we could say the rest of Tanakh. “I’ve come to take the Hebrew scriptures and I’ve come to walk them out correctly, purely without mistake in front of you. If you want to see how to interpret your Bible…” He’s not talking about accomplishing anything. He’s looking at the world around him and saying, “I’m showing you how to read your Bible correctly. Not just with your mind, although that’s included. I want you to read your Bible correctly with your mind, and I want you to read your Bible correctly with your life. I’m showing you, I’m telling you and showing you how to do that.” And that’s called fulfillment.

Brent: I wonder if the accomplishment thing is mashed together from the following verse where it says, “Nothing until heaven and earth disappeared, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: He’s not saying that until I accomplish everything, but until everything is accomplished.

Marty: Right.

Brent: Are people just mashing that all together?

Marty: Probably. Yes, probably in a sense. What’s interesting is the very next two verses. Go ahead and read the second half of that passage where you just left off and watch what he does with this.

Brent: Therefore, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Before I tell you that, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Marty: Right. Whatever’s being accomplished here. What’s being accomplished is a fulfillment of Torah, not the setting aside of Torah. He says that directly in the very next verses. This is about me showing you how to live this correctly, interpreting the law with your mind and your heart and your feet correctly. Almost like where we talked about the heart, the soul, and the very in the desert, like shema—that whole journey. I’m teaching you how to walk it out with your whole self. That’s absolutely what’s going on there.

Brent: I also want to ask about, I think the law part makes sense. They’re the 613 commands. Jesus isn’t abolishing them but He’s fulfilling them as we understand that in a new way. He says, I did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. How do you fulfill a prophet? How does that work? Because that’s not like a command.

Marty: Sure. You should link our discussion on third Isaiah because this would be a perfect example. Perfect example of what your question is. Because we talked about the suffering servant discourse, and when we talked about Isaiah 53, he was pierced for our transgressions, struck for our iniquities, by his stripes we are healed. This whole passage here that we’re like, “Oh Jesus.” We tried to say, Yes, Jesus, but not primarily. This passage is not about Jesus primarily. This passage is about Judah.

If they will persevere in their faithfulness, people will be saved through their faithfulness, but then when it gets to be 700 years later, Jesus could just as easily look at his listeners and say, I’m showing you how to walk out Isaiah 53 with my life, which yes will ultimately culminate in beautifully potent ways in the cross. Jesus’s whole ministry, his whole life is going to be walking out of Isaiah 53. Just pick your book. What about Amos? What about the call for Amos to let justice roll? Jesus would say if you watch me, I will —

When we talked about the baptism of Jesus, a few podcasts ago, Brent, we talked about Jesus saying, I have to do this, John, because why? What were Jesus’s words to John? John says, “I shouldn’t be baptizing you,” and Jesus says, no, I need to do this to what?

Brent: To fulfill all righteousness.

Marty: Now, we have some more pieces, but together with that, He’s saying, I’m doing this to show you what righteousness to fulfill. What does fulfill mean? To show, I’m doing this to show you righteousness. When I take on the waters of baptism, I’m doing this to say, if you watch my life, you will see correct interpretation and obedience to Torah. Take the prophecy of Amos. Take the prophecy of, well, whatever we’re supposed to learn from Jonah, we’ve talked about Jonah. Take the prophecy of, I don’t know, you pick one. Haggai. You pick one.

Brent: Zechariah.

Marty: Zechariah. Whatever it is about the apocalyptic literature of Zechariah, the message that Zechariah is trying to communicate to his audience we can see lived out in the life and ministry of Jesus. He is the perfect example of the fulfillment of all the calls of scripture. He says, “If you watch me, I will walk out the scriptures correctly.”

Brent: Okay, so follow-up to that. Why does he not talk about the writings? Why is it only in the law and the prophets?

Marty: Great question. Because the writings aren’t even canonized at this point. They’re in the process of canonizing what we would call the Ketuvim at this point in history. There’s only one reference and it comes much, much later in one of the later Gospels, and now I’m blanking on which one. You will have one reference to Jesus saying “the Law, the prophets, and the Psalms.” I think some translations actually say writings. I’d have to go back and check that. I see you work and I bet you’re searching for it right now. There’s some reference to the prophets and the writings, the Prophets and the Psalms, the law and the prophets and the Psalms. There’s only like one or two, but there’s only a few references, and it’s because they haven’t even been canonized in their Hebrew scriptures yet.

They exist, the Psalms exist. Proverbs exist. The book of Esther exists. They just haven’t decided what they’re going to do with this thing that will eventually become the Ketuvim. Did you find it?

Brent: Yes, in Luke 24.

Marty: Luke would be, according to my theory, the last Gospel penned. If it’s that late, we finally do have Ketuvim. We finally do have writing. Read the verse that you found.

Brent: He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

Marty: And the Psalms. There you go. Okay. There’s your reference to the three. That’s why he doesn’t reference this. They don’t technically even exist at this point in the Sermon on the Mount. If Matthew’s the first Gospel written, they’re in process. Let’s see here. If this is what Jesus is saying, “I’ve come to show you how to live out Torah correctly.” My question is: why does Jesus make that statement? Like in that point on the Sermon on the Mount, why does Jesus make that statement? There must have been an assumption. The only reason He would say it, the way that He does is if there’s an assumption that he’s actually coming to abolish Torah.

He says, “Do not think I have come to abolish Torah.” That must mean there must be people going—like I picture them scratching their head going, “Okay, so are we supposed to ignore Torah?” Now, think about what he just got done saying. Picture this: if the disciples are uncomfortable, picture all the religious people that could be watching; picture his disciples if that’s who he is talking to directly. Picture all of them and they’re watching this diverse crowd and the pagans are showing up from the Decapolis and people from across the region, from across the Jordan; you got maybe, I don’t know, Zealots and Sadducees. You’ve got the Pharisees bunch in there. You’ve got all these people coming together and they’re going, “Well, this isn’t right. This isn’t what God is doing. Jesus talks to his disciples and he says, “No, no, no. All these people are in.” You’re going to bring the Kingdom. You’re going to be the salt and the light and the hope of the world by pursuing this pronouncement of truth.

I think their response is, “Oh, so I guess what the Bible said isn’t what we’re—are you tossing out the law?” Jesus actually says “Absolutely not. In fact quite the opposite. I’ve come to show you what the law was always intended to show us. I’ve come to show you what the law was always intended to say.” He is fulfilling it in his interpretation. Let’s see, I have some notes here. Let’s see here. This is a great place to realize that the teachings of Jesus, for now, particularly the ones we’re looking at in the Sermon on the Mount are so radically different that people might be tempted to assume He’s throwing out Torah or teaching against some of its writings.

Jesus is clarifying that in fact, He is fulfilling it in his interpretation. This is a hefty claim, as Jesus would be saying that this is how God has always intended it to be interpreted from the moment that Jesus gave this Law to Moses on Mount—did I say, Jesus? From the moment that God gave Moses this Law on Mount Sinai, this was how God intended for humanity to read it. This is how they should understand it. Obviously, they didn’t have the language, they didn’t have the knowledge, they were 2,000 years in the past, but this is what God’s intent always has been, to teach humanity with Torah.

What is it that makes Jesus’s interpretation so radical? I think we’ve already seen it. What did we say was the heart of the Beatitudes, Brent? What is it about what Jesus is saying that people would go? Well, that’s not what Torah teaches. What was the center of the Beatitude, do you remember?

Brent: It was peace, wasn’t it?

Marty: Almost. Kind of. It’s shalom. Shalom to chaos. There were two Beatitudes that sat in the center. There was a little bit of a—my stomach is grumbling. I have a grumbling spiritual stomach…?

Brent: Because I hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Marty: Because I hunger and thirst for righteousness. What was the one that followed it? Well, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, I’ll tell you how to find righteousness you’re going to show…?

Brent: Mercy.

Marty: Mercy. Jesus’s assertion was righteousness looks like mercy, and he’s preaching this to a world that is being oppressed by the Romans. He’s not preaching this to a bunch of oppressors. Not that there’s not a place for that, don’t mishear me, but his message is to the people on the underbelly. He’s saying, do you want to know what righteousness looks like? It looks like mercy.

He’s going to go on to say, you want to know what this whole Kingdom thing looks like? It looks like love, looks like love of your neighbor, looks like love of your spouse. It looks like love of even your enemy. It looks like love. It looks like mercy. It looks like forgiveness. This is not how the typical person was taught to read Torah in his day. He’s saying, this is how you’re supposed to read it appropriately.

The question is now whether or not we believe Jesus is who He said He was. Because He is, if he is who He says He was, then his teachings will give us much to wrestle with. As they will come with an authority that we’ve never seen with human interpretation. That word authority is actually how I want to close out our podcast today. His teaching of authority. Can you remember what the word for authority is, Brent?

Brent: S’micha.

Marty: S’micha. The way I spell that, by the way—again, transliteration, and I always spell it differently than everybody—but for me, S’M-I-C-H-A, s’micha. S’M-I-C-H-A, s’micha. It’s the word that the Hebrews use in the rabbinical setting for authority. Like when Jesus says he’s not here to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, He goes on to do that very same thing. If you look at the next portion of your Sermon on the Mount, we’re going to actually read it in the next podcast.

Look at all the paragraphs that come next, what He says is “You’ve heard it said, but I say unto you... You’ve heard it said, do not murder, but I say unto you… you’ve heard it said, do not commit adultery but I say unto you...” That is a phrase. This “you’ve heard it said… I say unto you” phrase is a phrase that rabbis would use in Jesus’s day, but in order to use it, you had to have s’micha. You had to have rabbinical authority.

There’s a whole lot that we don’t know about history, and we’ve yet to put all the pieces together. What little piece as we know, and what appears to be going on in the Gospels seem to validate this prior to the day in AD 70, where Akiva started the formal office of Rabbi. He ordained formal Rabbis. Prior to that, we had lowercase R rabbis. We just had teachers. There was no formal office of capital R Rabbi until after the destruction of the temple.

Before that day you just had teachers, but there was a system that we’ve talked about before that kept you from just interpreting whatever you wanted. You could not just pick up your Bible and just say whatever you wanted, you were bound by the interpretations that came before you. You were bound by whatever your rabbi, you are not allowed to teach something new that your rabbi hadn’t taught unless you had been given authority to teach that new idea. Now your new idea still had to be in line with all the previous teachings, but the only thing you were allowed to do in this rabbinical system was, pass on the teachings of your rabbi unless you had s’micha.

Now, how did you get s’micha? Well, you got s’micha by having two rabbis that already had s’micha laying their hands on you publicly and pronouncing that you too had s’micha. The great question is Brent, did Jesus ever get s’micha in the Gospels? Can you think of a story where Jesus maybe got some s’micha?

Brent: I feel like I’m cheating.

Marty: You’ve heard this material before.

Brent: [laughs] But it just happened recently.

Marty: Okay.

Brent: Right before this teaching, basically.

Marty: Yes. The text we were looking at happened at His what?

Brent: His baptism.

Marty: His baptism. We have two sources that give him s’micha. Who’s the first person to pronounce that Jesus has s’micha

Brent: John the Baptist.

Marty: Now the question immediately rises. Did John the Baptist have s’micha? Here’s the cool thing. There’s no way to say John the Baptist had s’micha. We don’t have a record of John, the Baptist getting s’micha but the one thing we do know is that he had, at the very least what I might call rogue s’micha. He had natural s’micha. We’re told multiple times in the Gospels that the crowds loved this guy, that people couldn’t come after John, because they feared the crowds. John had been given because of who he was, the weight of his message, and the significance of his obedience and his walk. He had been given s’micha. Whether formally or informally, he had s’micha. He pronounces maybe rogue, informal s’micha on Jesus. We need a second validation. Where would that second validation come from?

Brent: From heaven.

Marty: From the voice, right? Which by the way, if God is ever the one who gives you s’micha. That’s a pretty good resume.

Brent: Pretty good.

Marty: Pretty good source content there. John and God validate Jesus’s s’micha. If you ever need to wrestle that through there’s your reference to Jesus getting s’micha. The one thing we can say from the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus is certainly operating like somebody who has s’micha. Because you don’t get to say, “You’ve heard it said do not murder, but I say unto you”—unless you have s’micha. You don’t get to—you can only say, you’ve heard it said, do not murder. My rabbi told me, this is how we need to interpret that passage. Jesus just got done saying, “I’m telling you how to interpret Torah.”

Now, he’s following up by saying, “I’ve got a kind of,” it’s not like a brand new out of left field, but “I’m taking—nobody handed me what I’m about to hand you. I’m stepping into the role of s’micha and I’m telling you how to appropriately interpret the scriptures.” In fact, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, you have a passage we’re jumping ahead. Don’t worry, we’ll catch every verse. Brent has a passage from the very end of chapter seven at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, read us what it says.

Brent: When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law.

Marty: All right. Blatant statement there about how they were amazed. They all look at each other going, “Wait a minute. He can’t do that. Where did he get a s’micha? Does he have s’micha? He can’t teach that without having s’micha.” They’re amazed because he is teaching as if he has a s’micha, not just as a typical teacher. He’s stepping into a role that they realize that he had. Now, what I love about that, I actually have some notes here that I want to read because I chose my words really carefully.

Like we’ve pointed out previously, Jesus is trying to make the case that he is not here teaching something outside of Torah. Instead, he claims to be here showing the world how we were always supposed to be reading it. According to the rabbinical claims of Jesus as a teacher, his teaching of Torah is what God was really after when the law was given at Sinai. This is important because it shows God is not here to change game plans. He’s not here to do away with the Jews or take their place away. He is here to throw the blinds open to what has always been true. Jesus is here to clean up our understanding. This is actually a more profound wrestling match than we might realize.

Because I think when we listen to Jesus’s teachings, I think so many Christians are like, “Man, that’s deep, that’s profound, that’s mystical, that’s rabbinic, that’s Jewish. I don’t really know what it means.” We put it in this place of like, Jesus’s teachings are these great ideas to think about, but we don’t put them as like, teachings with this great authority. Because we’re Western, he’s Eastern. We’re Americans, he’s a Jewish rabbi. And we’re just like, “Oh wow, Jesus and his teachings.” We put them in this weird other box rather than hearing them as these are the teachings of our rabbi.

Brian McLaren had a quote, one of my favorite quotes. He once said, “Christians have made Jesus their savior, but Paul their Lord.” I have always been convicted by that because Paul is easier to read for us. He writes these Greek letters to groups of people using imperative language, he’s not functioning in the same rabbinical sense that we read about Jesus and the Gospels. He’s just easier to understand, and so we gravitate to Paul’s teachings and we let Paul inform our reading about Jesus rather than Jesus informing our reading of Paul, and that is really important because I think the apostle Paul would roll over in his grave if he ever sensed that we were doing that, and he would say, “I’m not the rabbi. Jesus is the rabbi”.

Brent: Paul says, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

Marty: As I follow Christ, absolutely. That’s a pretty big wrestling match to chew on. Just some closing thoughts if you have any questions at the end of this. One must be confronted with the authority of Jesus and the Gospel accounts. Everything that the follower of Jesus interprets in the Bible has to be seen through the lens of Jesus. When Jesus says, listen to this, when Jesus says the right way to interpret the text is through love God and love others. You are now forced to read your Bible through that lens. As a follower of rabbi Jesus, you do not get to disagree.

You don’t have, I don’t have, Brent Billings does not have the s’micha. Jesus kept all s’micha in the Great Commission. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Jesus says I don’t give it away. Thank you very much. It’s his authority. We are not allowed to teach something new outside the lens of Jesus. Jesus is our interpretation. From a Jewish perspective, we don’t have that. No amount of chutzpah grants us the ability to do that. For some readers who thought that my treatment of the conquest and the book of Joshua was too far-reaching—this is an example, by the way—what about how I dealt with Joshua?

Some people are like, “Boy, you sure are reaching.” Please consider that whatever interpretation of the book is, it must be aligned with Jesus’s yoke of love God and love other people. Jesus said that all the law and the prophets are interpreted through that lens. Period. Paul will say all the teachings of the scriptures hang on the commandment to love other people. Whatever the book of Joshua is about, the book of Joshua is about loving people. That’s how we have to read it. Whatever we are supposed to learn from the book of Joshua is supposed to make us more loving of other people. As a follower of Jesus, I have absolutely no other option. I work, we, all of us that claim to be followers of Jesus. We work under the s’micha of the rabbi. It’s my words there, Brent. Got anything to follow up there?

Brent: I do have one question. Since we brought in this closing portion of the Sermon on the Mount, I noticed something. We’ve been talking about the Sermon on the Mount here on the podcast. Also, Real Life, where I work, we did a sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount recently. I’ve had a lot of Sermon on the Mount in the last few months. We make this really big deal at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that all these crowds are coming in, Jesus sees them. He goes up on the mountain and turns to his disciples and teaches all this stuff.

Marty: Correct.

Brent: Now, Sermon on the Mount—it’s not about this huge crowd that he’s preaching to, he’s talking to his disciples, but then at the end here, it says, “When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed.” What happened?

Marty: I love that you point that out in this passage because now I get to wrestle back the other direction. I’ll tell you what my journey on this topic has been. Years ago when I went to Israel, the first time I actually argued with Ray on eremos topos mountain here, he taught about it, and I was under the impression that great crowds gathered to listen to Jesus, and I said, “Matthew tells us this story in such a way that we see the crowds” and Ray pushed back against that and he said, “That’s fine. I’m not telling you you’re wrong, but that’s not how a rabbi would teach. Not this teaching. He would teach us to his disciples.”

Then he made me pull out my Bible and he made me read the verse. I had to read the verse and he called the disciples to himself. I sat there like a dummy and went, “Oh man, I can’t believe, I didn’t know my Text,” and now I sit here with your question, years later, let’s see, a decade later going, “Oh, man, I still didn’t know my Text because if I would’ve known my Text, I could have answered Ray with having him read that verse” and I’m sure it’s not, “Okay, well, which verse comes first,” or whatever, you get to read that, but Matthew is certainly playing off of this idea of the crowds and so even though he calls the disciples to himself. If you’re a true apologist and you need to make these things consistent and you need to make the details work or else you can’t sleep tonight, it’s very easy to say the crowds are around Jesus, Jesus calls his disciples and he teaches his disciples personally, while everybody else listens.

Yes, it’s a completely legitimate reading, nothing wrong with that. That might be exactly what happens here, but it’s also true that Matthew is certainly playing off of this idea of the crowds and the pronouncement of the Gospel and Jesus teaching these different groups of people how to live. However you want to read that, I love the fact that you point that out because I think I just wish I would’ve had that verse in 2008, the first time I had this argument.

Brent: I didn’t have it at the beginning of our discussion on the Sermon on the Mount either so…

Marty: Dang it.

Brent: I’m in no better of a place.

Marty: Yes. The things we learn. Getting in the Text.

Brent: I don’t know. Is this the thing where Jesus is spending the entire day? He’s saying a chunk and then he pauses and lets the disciples mull it over a little bit. Maybe they break for lunch at some point or is it like a 30-minute monologue basically.

Marty: There’s all these options to what it could be, and I think most scholars say our best option is this was never actually given in this one—historically, Jesus never sat down and gave this whole teaching all at once, but it’s how Matthew wants to record it. He probably gave all these teachings on multiple days, in multiple locations, in multiple spots and Matthew is pulling it together as one sermon for some of us, it might make us uncomfortable. That’s totally cool. Then we just wrestle with, yes. How else was this delivered? Was it delivered in one? I memorized the Sermon on the Mount once and I feel like reciting it at a normal pace.

Took me about 25, 28 minutes. Good, decent—good, Western American sermon length. Did he do it in a 28-minute chunk? Did he do it, like you said, over the course of a whole—was there discussion? Was there somebody from the Decapolis raising his hand in the back going, “Excuse me, what does that mean?” I don’t know.

Brent: Or were they just listening in and there’s one representative from each group. Just like leaning over a disciple’s shoulder, listening in, and then they go back and report.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. Good questions.

Brent: So many possibilities. More questions than answers.

Marty: As always.

Brent: Definitely.

Marty: Means we’re doing it right.

Brent: Yes, exactly. All right, well, I think that’ll do it for this somewhat more lengthy episode. Lots of questions. Lots of great things to talk about.

Marty: Jesus should do that to us.

Brent: Yes. Get in a group and bring up your own questions. There’s discussion groups all over the world. You can find that on BEMAdiscipleship.com. You can get a hold of me and Marty. You can pose your questions to us—whatever works—but ask the questions, dig into the Text. Thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.