Disciples of Rabbi Jesus (Full Message) | Shane Willard | Church Online (2021.02.21.0830)

[Music] thank you everybody it's so good to be here with you if you're the type let's follow the actual bible matthew chapter four we got a lot uh to do today it's so good i think i i think it is my tenth year but one was forgettable right so that that's that's that was you guys forgot about it i'm just i'm joking i don't know how many it's been a long time just part of the the furniture as always um afterwards um we have a resource table set up it's a it's just all my new stuff from the last year and a half or so you can come out there and see the team and uh as always we give a hundred percent of that away to the poor and the afflicted three orphanages in china uh look after mentally handicapped children uh and a rescue home in cape town that gets girls out of sex trafficking in cape town um in in the cape flats so you could uh pick those things up a couple things about the night meetings i make a couple commitments to you please come out um two commitments one it'll be fresh relevant and it will change the way you see god okay and number two it will be on time so we'll be out by eight okay i realize people go to work and if you're if you're over 40 you don't do things outside after seven o'clock right right like i turned 40 people ask me they say sometimes they'll go you want to go to a movie what time does the movie start 7 30. what am i an animal right 7 30 it means i'm not going home are you serious right now but so i know if you're over 40 you're like seven o'clock you're already you're already calculating what time you'll be home we'll be out by eight o'clock we'll honor your time and i promise you it will be impactful so i want to talk to you i want to tell you this morning about jesus and i want to tell you a story about jesus and reground us into why we do what we do at new hope because ultimately new hope exists to be disciples of a rabbi named jesus all right and so i want to i want to go to the most elemental way of looking at jesus and hopefully jesus will get really big for us today this is matthew chapter four it's a story that on the service makes no sense and so my goal is to make it make sense and then ask what are we gonna do about it this is matthew chapter four if you could bring uh those slides up it says as jesus was walking beside the sea of galilee he saw two brothers simon called peter and his brother andrew they were casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen that's gonna be very important they were fishermen um we're gonna get to that in a second come follow me jesus said and i'll send you out to fish for people hardly a compelling invitation that actually makes no sense at once they left their nets and followed him an odd response going on from there they saw two other brothers james the son of zebedee and his brother john and they were in a boat with their father zebedee preparing their nets and jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him what an odd story grown people leaving everything they know to follow a guy whose sales pitch is literally this compelling follow me that doesn't make any sense grown men leaving everything they know to f they quit their job what was zebedee thinking they left their boat in the water if you're here and you're married how does that conversation go hey sweetie how was your day quit my job you did what quit my job why well this guy came by told me to follow him i thought it was a good idea where did he say you're going to go he didn't say when are you coming back didn't say that either he just said follow me so i did now that doesn't make a whole lot of sense the problem is is that jesus has an incredible success rate with this quite frankly awful sales pitch follow me goes four for four then he goes five for five here's mark chapter two this is the calling of cycle once again jesus went out beside the lake and a large crowd came to him he began to teach them and as he walked along he saw levi the son of alphaeus sitting at a tax collector's booth follow me strange jesus told him so believe i got up and followed him five for five ends up going 12 for 12. and then other people are like excited to join up too this is strange grown people leaving everything they know to follow a guy who only told them to follow him and when i understood why this was going on it changed my life i'm hoping it's going to change you and re-ground us into why we do what we do at new hope see to understand this passage we have to understand that the greatest honor in all of israel was to be considered a rabbi it was a title so dignified it's only given to three people in all of scripture jesus paul and gamaliel that is it it was especially every hebrew boy longed to be a rabbi because it meant you were trusted by the community to teach scripture admit you were trusted by the community to teach so everywhere jesus goes they're handing him a scroll going tell us what this means what is what is going on give us guidance for our life and so every hebrew boy wanted to be a rabbi but at the end of the day only the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best made it it's sort of like this how many boys growing up in toowoomba want to play rugby league all of them how many of them are ever actually going to play for the brisbane broncos none of them why because only the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best the best bit this is why every 45 year old man into womba has a back in the day story right like i was awesome back in the day right then i hurt my knee i'd have made it to the broncos if it wasn't for my knee no you just weren't that good and we know you weren't that good and you know you weren't that good but we're gonna give you the whole knee injury thing right it's no it's no trouble it was like that for being a rabbi you had to go through so much to be considered a rabbi let me see if i can run it through it with you in about two minutes okay first thing you had to do to be a rabbi is you had to memorize leviticus by the age of six that that eliminated most people okay you had to memorize leviticus by the age of six if you memorized leviticus by the age of six you qualified to go to school right let me show you the name of the two schools if you could bring those up for me the two schools were called the bets affair and the bet tell me literally that's the fair school of the book bet talmid the school of disciples the hebrew word for disciple is talmud literally teachable ones ones who are teachable learning to live like a rabbi would teach them to live that's the bet tell me that the vet safari is school the book school of the book in 10 seconds was you had to memorize the entire bible genesis exodus leviticus numbers in deuteronomy to graduate from the bets afar to the vet tell me it lasted from six to twelve you had to memorize the entire torah in that six year period of time you had to then qualify in two ways to go to the next school one you had to memorize the whole thing and prove you had they had a memorization test but once you proved you memorized it it qualified you to take an exam which leads to this question if the exam to just take the exam you had to memorize the whole book what could they possibly be testing you on your torah exam when you were 12 years old was not based on your mastery of content you had to master the content and take the exam it was on your ability to ask questions about that content in order to keep a conversation about god going the greatness of rabbis was not known in their ability to answer questions but to ask the right questions to get people to think differently about god think about your scripture when jesus was 12 years old he was wowing the teachers of the law with his questions now if you weld the teachers of the law with your questions you graduated to the next school the bet tell me the bet tell me was 18 years long lasted from 12 to 30 and it was five stages for the sake of time and relevance we'll call them stage one two three four five and the most simple way to explain it is if you graduated from stage one you got to go to stage two yes everybody's with me this is great and so if you've ever wondered why jesus disappeared from 12 to 30 and then at 30 years old he comes up and everybody's like rabbi rabbi rabbi this is why and so in that bet tell me you would learn for 18 years from a master rabbi about how to interpret scripture a rabbi's way of interpreting scripture was called his yoke a yoke was a summary statement of how he interpreted scripture it was what he bound which was forbidden or what he loosed which was allowed it was basically how do you live like this rabbi and so you'd go from one to two to three to four to five and and most people would be disqualified if at any point you were disqualified you were told i'm sorry you're disqualified go back and earn a living at your family trade but the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best kept going so at stage five everybody graduates and stage five has a special name it's the most important word i'm gonna teach you today if you could throw that next word up for me this word is called samika there it is right there samika now once you graduate from rabbi school the only question left to ask is what kind of rabbis will you be there were there's two types of rabbis one a rabbi without samika and to a rabbi with samika now this word is so important i want to teach it to you so i want everybody with some go to womba gusto to say this word to me it sounds like this i'll say it first samika ready go samika all right let's try that again because in a little bit more gusto let's go up one more level ready go some me got now if you want to sound jewish which of course we all do right you got to add a little movement to this it goes like this ready let me teach it to you all right so i want everybody to practice that it just sounds like this ready go yes very good right let's try that again a little more gusto ready go all right so in rabbi school there were rabbis with samika get your cue and there were rabbis without samika right now the word samika was the word for authority so there were rabbis with authority and there were rabbis without authority 99.9 of all rabbis rabbis without authority but the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of us the best got ordained as a special sort of rabbi a rabbi with authority here was the difference a rabbi without authority had to teach his next disciples the same yoke that his rabbi taught him so that every yoke in israel was somehow linked back to some rabbi with authority but a rabbi with samika a rabbi with authority could make up his own yoke basically start his own movement right now here's how they decided who had authority and who didn't when you graduated from rabbi school they baptized you why because they baptized you any time you changed social status so if you go from not rabbi to rabbi we're going to baptize you if you go from unclean to clean we're going to baptize you and here was the rule at your baptism you had to have two verbal witnesses to your authority to be called a rabbi with authority think about your scripture when jesus was 30 years old he went out to the desert to be baptized and john says behold the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the whole world whose sandals i'm not worthy to untie witness 1. john baptizes jesus jesus comes up out of the water as a normal regular rabbi until a second voice speaks this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased and there was thunder and lightning and birds and rainbows it's almost like the father was saying if no one else is going to speak up i will and jesus comes up out of the water not just as a rabbi but a rabbi with samika a rabbi with samika which means he can make up his own yoke and jesus spent the rest of his life wrecking everybody else's yoke think about your scripture you do not teach as the other rabbis teach but you teach as one with authority it doesn't mean he was yelling and then he was saying something new you're teaching us a different way of seeing the world see they understand this that jesus was not somebody to believe in like if if we dumb jesus down to just believe in jesus no no jesus wasn't somebody to believe in jesus was somebody to so profoundly connect to that it fundamentally changes the way we see the whole world it's two different things it was why did we exist at new hope we exist at new hope to be teachable people learning how to live and see the world how jesus saw the world because that is the hope of the world that's that's actually the most i don't know that's the most basic thing that we do that is the groundedness of everything that we are up to now here's what the rabbi would do the new rabbi is 30 years old and what does a rabbi need to be a rabbi he needs to have disciples otherwise he's a monk he's just sitting around thinking about stuff right so a rabbi not teaching people is a philosopher you don't do that you want to go back and you want to you want to have students now think about it where would the new 30 year old rabbis get his students from he would go to the bet tell mid and what's he going to find he's going to find pre-vetted 12-year-old boys boys that had already memorized all the scripture they'd already proven they were smart they proved they were had grit they had perseverance they had passion he had asked no questions about their abilities other than this he had to ask do i believe they could do greater things than me and if the rabbi believed they could do greater things than him he would ordain them into his rabbi school with two words follow me follow me follow me follow me follow me every hebrew boy long to hear the words of a rabbi say follow me but most of them were disqualified so this new rabbi doesn't go to the bet tell me to find his disciples where does he go he goes to a lake and who does he find he finds some fishermen and he stands on the shore and he says simon andrew follow me and they're jumping out of boats for the opportunity why because they had long their whole life to be trusted with this level of authority and now this new rabbi is qualifying disqualified people that is the yoke of our rabbi what do we value at new hope we value the grace of god to the level that we are willing to walk through any process to requalify people who think they might have been disqualified that is the yoke of our rabbi now once the rabbi found his students they would have to go through something called walking training because you wanted to walk exactly like your rabbi one historian said that you could always tell which students belong to which rabbi because they walk the same which makes me wonder if there wasn't like a first century rabbi with a limp or something right so you would actually learn to walk remember jesus said he said people will know you're my disciple if you walk like i yes yes and you could always tell who the best student of the day was the best student of the day got to be the line leader just like now and you could tell who that person was because they would get covered in the dust of their rabbi from the waist down it was an honor to to pick up the dust from your rabbi's shoes you'd go back to synagogue or you'd go back to temple and you'd have dust from the waist down but this wasn't dust you wanted to wash off this was dust you wanted to show off right like you go back to temple you like hey check out my dust right the the reason is is because it meant you were walking the closest behind your rabbi and here's the truth of it we will either be covered in the dust of our rabbi or we'll be covered in the dust of our own issues the dust of our dad the dust of our mom the dust of our denomination or my personal favorite that's just what i was always taught but we don't want to be covered in those dust we want to be covered in the dust of our rabbi because whatever we're covered in the dust in is what we cover others in and the hope for the world is that and here's the thing unless you've been given special samika and you oh good unless you've been given special samika and you haven't we have to live and teach the yoke of our rabbi because the yoke of jesus christ is the hope for the world and that's why we're here which leads me to all kinds of things like there's this one time there was this lady and she was caught in the act of adultery like in the act oh in the act now that's not a great spectator sport even if it was appropriate but to get caught in the act that's now you guys know your bible right what does the bible clearly say you have to do to someone caught in the act of adultery you stone them right think about your story so they bring her to jesus let's see if you're paying attention why do they need jesus they need someone with yes so they bring this lady to jesus and they're trying to trick him and they say jesus the torah which you memorized by the way clearly says to stoner what's your yoke say now jesus is in a conundrum isn't he does jesus want to stone the lady no is jesus supposed to keep the torah yes so jesus does something brilliant he says well you're right the taurus says stoner so my yoke says stoner there i've kept the torah oh but wait a minute i have authority which means i can make up my own yoke the torah says stoner so my yoke says stoner but my yoke also says you can't throw stones unless you're perfect it says that everybody got tired of holding their stones and jesus doesn't do anything he just writes something in the dirt right it says they all lay their stones down and they and jesus waits for everybody to leave and then he asks her a masterful question lady where are your accusers not what did you do not don't tell me about it lady where are your accusers and she says there not here he says great then neither do i condemn you why because the torah said you had to stone someone caught adultery but the torah also says you have to have two witnesses to condemn somebody jesus couldn't make her sin go away so he simply made the witnesses go away which automatically declares a mistrial that is genius stuff and is the yoke of our rabbi so what are we doing here well we're here to be teachable people learning how to see the world and live like jesus lived what does that mean it means we're here to qualify disqualified people it means we are here not to be right about singular verses rather fulfill scripture by treating others as you would want to be treated the yoke of our rabbi says we are not called to be right about singular verses or we should have stoned her we are called to love people more than the rules if you want to know the yoke of our rabbi in one sentence it's this god loves people more than the rules god cares about you more than the rule you broke that god loves people more than the rules and he has called his followers to be people who fulfill scripture instead of simply being right about one verse that is the yoke of our rabbi there's this one time there was this guy and he was worried about how an inheritance was being divided up and jesus says i'm worried not about your inheritance but about something in your heart that thinks stuff adds value to your life don't be a barn builder that is the yoke of our rabbi you know the yoke of our rabbi exists in the old testament too like you go to hebrews 11 or something it has all these heroes of the faith you by faith abraham by faith if you look at their stories they all made mistakes with zeros attached to it they were all jacked up a little bit you know by faith abraham gave his wife to pharaoh's haram and it says he greatly profited from egyptian influence while his wife suffered in the harem if cnn and the internet would have been around back then what would he say about abraham if abraham was available to preach here next sunday would we welcome that or would we talk about his mistake by faith isaac by faith moses was a premeditated murderer i looked this way and that and seeing no one i killed the man and hit him in the sand problem was the next day the sand shifted you got this leg sticking up out of the sand god said you'll do i'll have you write like the foundation for the whole thing right like samson had a problem with women for sure david had 700 women 700 women you know there are denominations christian denominations of the world today that according to their bylaws would never have david preach from their stage because of his behavior but they'll open a book that david wrote call it the word of god and fail to see the hypocrisy in that right like come on you wonder why we don't make any sense right right but by faith solomon solomon had a thousand women a thousand women god said you want to write a book on wisdom imagine that conversation excuse me sir are you the guy that successfully navigated the affections of a thousand women i am you gotta be the smartest guy on earth let's write a book it's it's almost like the spirit of god was never judging or criticizing or banishing it was always engaging the broken story in order to make a better narrative that is the yoke of our rabbi you know what jesus would do jesus did crazy stuff like cook breakfast on the beach for people who denied him in public court like who would do that jesus and if we're supposed to be teachable people who are learning to live and see the world like that guy did then how are we doing with this like because unless we've been given special samika and we have definitely not we're supposed to show the world how jesus lived and thought about the world there's this one time jesus is having a stressful day you know and he ends up on a cross right that's a very stressful day he's been betrayed by his friends he's been beaten half to death he's got nails and you know what even in that amount of stress he was still thinking about other people first like he's standing in the gap god forgive them the ones that beat me forgive oh this guy on the left he doesn't know what to say he just says please remember we let him in too you know like jesus an incredible stress and strife is actually still thinking about others that is the yoke of our rabbi there's this one time this is in matthew chapter 9 i think somewhere around there it's a real it's an easy line to read over it says jesus took his disciples to caesarea philippi real simple line i could tell you from galilee to caesarea philippi is over an hour in a car on a paved road today you didn't just sort of slide by caesarea and it's not the place you'd go even today it's not called caesarea philippi it's called panaya the city of pan caesarea philippi was the headquarters of the worship of the goat god pan this was not where you would go on a missions trip this is an odd place so i i've been there i took a photo of it and i've given the back media people the photo let me show you this photo this is a photo caesarean fellow philippine now the reason this photo is of such high quality is because i took it myself if you notice people photographers everywhere are trying to get strangers arms in their photo did it get you some of that and this is the center center you feel like huge big rock face see the the cave over the left that was called the entrance and exit to hell right and over to the right that was the that was the temple to the goat god pan and and i there there are children here so i gotta i'm gonna talk in code but adults pick it up okay pan i don't wanna be gross but i do wanna be historically accurate okay pan received worship through outdoor public acts with goats of a fertility ritual okay all right so like in other words whatever the worst thing going on in toowoomba today is like it's nickelodeon compared to caesarea philippi so jesus takes his disciples here and there'd have been stuff going on right there that you don't want to even think about right and and here's the reason they would do that here's what they were taught the priest of pan taught them that if they didn't worship pan like that he would open up the entrance to hell and swallow everybody into it so people were doing these things not because they liked it but because they were oppressed and enslaved by a religious thought that was holding them captive so jesus takes his disciples here remember what happens like everybody's distracted as you would be so jesus has to focus if he says hey peter hey bro right here man right here who do you say that i am and peter shakes it off he's all disoriented you know and he says hey you're the christ the son of the living god jesus says that's right and upon this rock we'll build a church and not even the gates of hell will prevail against it in other words jesus went into that level of debauchery and he doesn't attack them for their sin he takes on the thing behind he's like you're acting like that because you're scared of this and jesus stands over the gates of hell and says bring it on that is the yoke of our rabbi i used to kick bucks i got quite good at it won the southeastern regionals two years in a row got invited to the u.s open ended up invited to the nasco world championships i'm 45 i don't want to fight anymore and fighting's different back then we stood up and fought and we clenched a rift broca's now they take you to the ground and tear your arm off different okay but i used to fight and there was a guy there's a guy in my neighborhood his name was kenneth brown kenneth brown was like a maniac he was he was a freak of nature i am six foot two i am 85 kilos today he was six foot two ninety five kilos in like the eighth grade he was one of these freaks of nature that was like shaving in the fourth grade right right like we went to recess he shaved it never occurred to me he might have failed four times i wasn't sure right he was huge right he showed up he says shea willard i think i can whoop you i said i think you're right he said no i'm serious i want to fight i said i'm serious i'm not fighting you you don't fight people twice your size it's a rule you know he goes i bought boxing gloves to prove it i said oh boxing you mean we're going to put on gloves and you can't grab me and take me to the ground we're going to stand up and buck that's different we'll do that so we go outside and the friends make a ring you could picture this fight fight fight right i got in the ring with kenneth brown and i beat him half to death i was fast he was slow i was skilled he was not i was just in and out couldn't hurt him he's huge right he he got frustrated and tried to end the fight with one punch it looked about like this i actually had time to think i'll move right he left himself in this position i've never before nor since hit a human being this hard it's a perfect shot everything big muscles leading small muscles everything compact everything right right on the base of his chin bam i just stood over him waiting for him to fall but he didn't he caught his balance and he looked up and now he was mad and he looked up at me and he said is that all you got and it was how many of you know you hit somebody with your best shot you lose if they're still coming at you you know what paul said paul said the yoke of our rabbi was put on public display at the cross oh love everybody forgive everybody oh bless your enemies oh pray for those who despite oh really can you do that under significant stress and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and they beat him and he kept loving and forgiving and loving and forgiving and loving and forgiving and loving and forgiving until he died you can't do more to a guy than kill him here's what i think happened i think jesus descended into hell and looked satan right in the eye and said boy is that all you got was that your best sh you thought you could end my yoke by killing me no no no i'm gonna walk out of here in three days and i'm gonna cook breakfast on the beach for the very people who denied me in my time and need because my yoke is i qualify disqualified people i call people to fulfill scripture instead of simply being right about one verse and i definitely love people more than the rules and that yoke will change the world so my brothers and sisters of new hope may jesus get so big that we never ever take authority that's not ours and change his yoke because he's entrusted you with his yoke because he believes you could do greater things than him the yoke of our rabbis the hope for tuwumba australia and the world may we be that body a teachable people learning to see the world and live like jesus lived until i see you tonight grace and peace everybody god bless

Channel: New Hope Church

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Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021