Lesson 28 - Matthew 8 cont

[Music] so [Music] go [Music] as we delve deeper and deeper into matthew's gospel to this point we have found three elements to be always present and and repetitive therefore it's crucial for us to notice them and to understand that matthew has constructed his gospel around them first matthew presents yeshua of nazareth as the second moses and thus paints him in that role as the prophet like me that moses prophesied would come second of all the kingdom of heaven has arrived it arrived when john the baptist appeared as a type of elijah or perhaps better having the spirit of elijah announcing that a path was being made in the wilderness for the coming of the lord thus everything that happens every utterance of christ is to be taken in that knowledge and in that context because it marks the beginning of a new era that ushers us into the final era and third matthew highlights the ongoing relevance and efficacy of the law of moses for jesus followers only now it is to be accomplished in light of believers having the holy spirit dwelling in us and of messiah's demand given in the sermon on the mount that these laws and commandments from his father are to be taken to an even higher level in our lives with not only the outward but also the inward moral perfection as the goal not only our behavior is to be conformed to the will of god but also our intents and our motives now many bible scholars and commentators as well as numerous of those esteemed men who established the original faith doctrines of the thousands of christian denominations would generally agree with my observations as concerns the first two of these three elements we find thus far constantly present within the book of matthew few would agree with the third element even though a plain logical even historical reading of matthew's narrative reveals it with a great degree of clarity i have long found it fascinating and honestly not just a little bit puzzling why it is this way what or who this source of this anti-law of moses viewpoint was where did it come from i mean i also know from the many emails sent to me that not just a few of you might like to know how this happened what the earliest church thought about this matter and if this anti-law stance of the modern church has always been with us so before we continue in matthew chapter eight we're going to take a substantial detour to look into this rather important matter that has to my way of thinking sent the church hurtling towards that very darkness that christ was warning us against and the way to do this is to study the writings of the early church fathers now this is going to be a bit lengthy because i'm going to present to you some of the writings of the early church fathers now because context matters i'm not going to quote only a phrase or just a sentence but rather a paragraph or more so be patient please but also please stay focused this is information that every believer needs there is a long list of what are commonly called the early church fathers and and these are bishops and teachers and scholars that include the very earliest first century church leaders apart from the original apostles all the way up to the 8th century church leaders the main dividing points among them our weather each served in the east or in the west and whether each lived and wrote before or after the council of nicaea it was at the council of nicaea in the 4th century convened at the behest of the roman emperor constantine when the christian church began to morph into something more recognizable to us today as the institution that it's become at nicaea later on at leodicchia the many independent churches underwent a consolidation of authority to be based in rome with a centralized church government under a common set of faith doctrines and principles although some of the attending bishops rejected those doctrines and so many of those churches grew on their own outside of the authority of rome now the vast majority of these faith doctrines have shaped and tooled especially the western church from that day forward for the better or the worse now the earliest of the early church fathers is clement of rome clement was born about 30 a.d just about the time of christ's crucifixion so he was alive during the lifetimes of the original twelve disciples not a great deal is known about his early history exactly when he became a believer what is known is that in the later part of his life he became a member of the church government of the church of rome thus he had power and he had authority now what makes him so important for what i want to show you is that he represents the absolute earliest of the church fathers that operated at a time when jews still represented the bulk of church leadership now it's believed that clement was was a gentile probably a roman he was personally discipled by peter and paul we find him mentioned most prominently in the book of philippians when he was working alongside paul at the city of philippi about 57 a.d here in philippians 4 3 i also request you loyal uh syzygus to help these women for they have worked hard proclaiming the good news with me along with clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life now near to or shortly after paul's death clement wrote epistles to various of the churches that paul had established because clement was a natural successor to the martyred paul having been at his side learning his doctrine from him this is a good time to mention that many epistles were written by various early church leaders and they were floating around the many believing synagogues which is what the earliest churches were as were several gospel accounts of christ's life it would not be until early in the 3rd century that a church council convened and they chose from among quite a number of these authoritative documents the few that would be declared holy with the purpose of establishing the first christian bible that's the thing we call the new testament so clement's letters carried much weight as did paul's and peters and john's now unfortunately just a few of clement's works have survived we only know of the existence of the others because they are given mention by later church fathers such as polycarp and papias and eusebius however we do have what has become labeled the first epistle to the corinthians penned by clement that reveals some some pretty important information about his faith principles and his foundational beliefs and since there is no known rebuttal of his point of view from this era nor does he disagree with any of the new testament writings that would come later it's it's it's reasonable to conclude that his can be taken as the earliest doctrinal viewpoint not only of gentile members of the church of jesus christ but also of its leadership jew and gentile his epistle is wonderful reading but for the sake of time and for our purposes i'm going to only give you a couple of excerpts that are especially eye-opening and characteristic i think of his entire epistle while at the same time pointing out that the reason for his letter to the corinthian church that paul had established was that the church there was in turmoil and they were fighting among themselves wolves and sheep's clothing that yeshua warned his followers would come the false prophets that would arise within the church they were the problem but the problem behind the problem was disobedience to the law of moses although perhaps not in ways we might instinctively have suspected here is clement of rome these things therefore being manifest to us and since we look into the depths of the divine knowledge it behooves us to do all things in their proper order which the lord has commanded us to perform its stated times he has enjoined offerings to be presented and serviced to be performed to him and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly but at the appointed times and hours where and by whom he desires these things to be done he himself has fixed by his own supreme will in order that we that all things being piously done according to his good pleasure may be acceptable unto him now those therefore who present their offerings at the appointed times are accepted and blessed for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the lord they sin not for his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests and their own special ministrations devolve on the levites and then the layman is bound by the laws that pretend to layman now put on your jewish mindset for the moment to understand what the gentile believer and church leader clement is saying okay he says that the believers of corinth church started by paul are duty-bound to do all things in their proper order by order he means from a christ followers perspective the things the ritual things that are to be done when they are to be done and who is to do them the things that the believers at corinth are to do and therefore this pertains to any and every group of christians by the way are the rituals that the lord has commanded to be observed at their stated times or better at their appointed times therefore clement goes on to say that they're required offerings sacrifices and the way they're to be presented are fixed by god therefore we they are to be done in a a pious manner so that such observances cannot change and thereby that will be pleasing to god this means that when one presents their offerings they should occur at the appointed times biblical feasts for an example so that they will be accepted and blessed by god and further that doing the things that are the laws of the lord mean they're avoiding sin that is to not do these laws and commandments as they are prescribed is sin and clearly this can only be referring to the law of moses now while so many in the church will twist his term the laws of the lord into meaning the laws of jesus which is simply not so we find clement making it clear that it can only be the law of moses the biblical torah he's speaking about because he then devolves into saying that priests must do what the lord commanded as well as the levites and then laymen as well and there is no record of yeshua issuing instructions to priests and to levites priests and levites each have their own roles and they cannot be assigned to the common class of god worshippers laymen however layman well laymen also have their own set of responsibilities and clement's language their own order let's read a little bit further in his first epistle to the corinthians let every one of you brethren give thanks to god in his own order living in all good conscience with becoming gravity not going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him not in every place brethren are the daily sacrifices to be offered or the peace offerings or the sin offerings and the trespass offerings but in jerusalem only and even there they can't be offered in any place but only at the altar before the temple that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned those therefore who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to his will are punished with death you see brethren that the greater the knowledge that we have been vouchsafed to us the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed see the first thing we can conclude from his words are that since he speaks plainly about the temple and the altar and the sacrifices thereupon he wrote this epistle prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 a.d but also notice that clearly clement was addressing a controversy see it seems that some in the church at corinth were offering the daily tamid that everyday sacrifice prescribed in the law of moses as well as offering some of the other classes of sacrifices like peace offerings and sin offerings and trespass offerings but they were doing it locally they were doing it in corinth now this could only be happening at an altar that the cor corinthian believers built probably associated with their synagogue their church if you would at corinth but that was not their right it was not their order it was not their position to do the sacrificial rituals were to be done only by the priests and the levites and only at the temple in jerusalem so what we find is the clement the earliest gentile church father paul's and peter's understudy understands that the law of moses including the ongoing temple sacrifices pertain to believers but believers cannot change the law in the name of christ such that layman can now perform sacrifices or that these sacrifices can now be performed at corinth or any other place they might choose rather these must only be done by priests at the temple altar in jerusalem as prescribed by the law there can be no stronger or more straightforward endorsement than clements of the continuing relevance and authority of the law of moses as it stood for centuries for all believers now those of us the minority in the church who believe in yeshua's savior and that only his blood and divine grace can save us at the same time also know that yeshua's own words that we are duty duty-bound to continue following the law of moses not as a means of gain of gaining our salvation but rather as evidence of it see this is something that is exactly in line with what clement was taught by paul and peter and so he himself just continued the doctrine we don't have to speculate about this it's recorded for us i just read it to you now another very early church father poppius was born when clement was about 40 years old and he seems to have personally known clement although there are but fragments of his works available to us we learned this important fact from papias matthew put together the oracles of the lord in the hebrew language and each one interpreted them as best he could so what we are reading in our new testament from the jewish matthew was first written down in matthews and christ's birth language hebrew and this fact lends further weight to clement's position concerning what he was taught from the jews peter and paul and when we maintain that jewish context both cultural and religious that the new testament was written in and matthews is the most jewish of the gospels in my opinion clearly the earliest christians knew they were to continue to be obeying the law of moses however some believers outside of the holy land corinth for an example went so far too far by trying to themselves perform the priestly duties of the law and doing them where wherever they just happened to be like in corinth so from around 50 a.d to around 90 or 100 a.d the generally held belief within the church was that the law of moses was still relevant valid and to be obeyed by both jewish and gentile believers however the how of it was being hotly debated within the church whose congregations were dispersed in foreign nations outside of the holy land and as we read the works of succeeding church fathers we see a decided turn hear this we see a decided turn from how to do the law as believers to these leaders being against the law and then even against the jewish people we find this reality boldly expressed in the writings of the early church father justin martyr now he was born in 110 a.d died at only 55 years of age but he wrote profusely and his works are greatly revered and taught within christian seminaries at least partly because so many of his documents are complete and they're well preserved they are also well pleasing to a gentiles only church i'm going to read to you some excerpts that he wrote which come from one of the most famous documents in all christendom a dialogue with trifo now by all accounts this is a true encounter that the gentile christian justin barter had with the jew trifold and during part of the conversation some of trifo's jewish friends were present so in a dialogue with trifo we read about this back and forth conversation between justin and and trifo the gentile and the jew now i want to read a few excerpts from it so that you can see what christianity had already become by about 150 a.d only perhaps 60 or 70 years after the church father clement lived and governed and wrote justin martyr says he's talking to trifo and his friends that are there is there any other matter my friends in which we are blamed than this that we live not after the law and are not circumcised in the flesh as your forefathers were and we do not observe sabbaths as you do are our lives and customs also slandered among you i ask have you also believed concerning us that we eat men and that after the feast having extinguished the lights we engage in promiscuous concubinage or do you condemn us in this alone that we adhere to such tenants and believe in an opinion untrue as you think well this is what we're amazed at said dryfo but those things about which the multitudes speak they're not worthy of belief for they are most repugnant to human nature moreover i am aware that your precepts and the so-called gospel are so wonderful and so great i suspect no one can keep them for i have carefully read them but this is what we are at most loss about that you professing to be pious and supposing yourselves better than others are not in any particular way separated from them and do you not and you don't alter your mode of living from that of the nations and that you observe no festivals no sabbaths do not have the right of circumcision and further resting your hopes on a man that was crucified you yet expect to obtain some good thing from god while you do not obey his commandments have you not read that that soul shall be cut off from his people who have not been circumcised on the eighth day and this has been ordained for strangers and for slaves equally but you despising this covenant rationally reject the consequent duties and you attempt to say persuade yourselves that you know god when however you perform none of these things which they do who fear god if therefore you can defend yourself on these points and make it manifest in what way you hope for anything whatsoever even though you do not observe the law this we would very glad to hear from you and we shall make other similar investigations so this is interesting interesting stuff so justin martyr says that there are all kinds of slanderous accusations by jews about what christians do even including cannibalism and having wild festive orgies i want to pause to point out that by this time gentiles fully controlled the church jewish believers have been marginalized mostly pushed out so what jews said about christians was essentially a retort and a response to what a gentile exclusionary christianity now falsely claimed against jews it was a tit for tat now trifo responds to justin that he is intelligent and observant enough to know that some of the more outrageous things said about christians are not true however he does believe that some other things said are true and those things completely puzzle him he says that he has carefully read the gospel which of the several in circulation at that time we don't know my bed is it was matthew because his was first written in hebrew and was written to jews in a jewish context and these things that puzzle him are how can you read that gospel and say you believe what's written and then turn around and refuse to obey the law of moses as a basic doctrine how can you do that how can you defend dropping the feasts the sabbath refused circumcision when the subject of the gospel jesus himself obeyed these laws and has said his followers should too trifo it seems to me received some of the truths of the gospel better than justin martyr did it's only that trifold rejected it on the principle that yeshua of nazareth was not the messiah or the son of god here is justin's response now to that accusation will be no other god o trifo nor was there from eternity any other existing i thus addressed him but he who made and disposed all this universe nor do we think that there is one god for us another for you but that he alone is god who led your fathers out from egypt with a strong hand and a high arm nor have we trusted in any other for there is no other but in him in whom you have also trusted the god of abraham of isaac and of jacob but we don't trust through moses or through the law for then we'd be the same as yourselves justin then goes on to attack a few of god's laws and commandments of the torah so this is justin continuing and god himself proclaimed by moses speaking thus and circumcise the hardness of your hearts and no longer stiffen the neck for the lord your god is both lord of lords and a great mighty and terrible god who regardeth not persons and taketh not rewards and in leviticus because they have transgressed against me and despised me and because they have walked contrary to me i also walked contrary to them and i shall cut them off in the land of their enemies then shall their uncircumcised heart be turned for the circumcision according to the flesh which is from abraham was given as a sign that you may be separated from other nations and from us and that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer and that your land may be desolate and your cities burned with fire and the strangers may eat your fruit and your presence and not one of you may go up to jerusalem for you are not recognized among the rest of men by any other mark than your fleshly circumcision for none of you i suppose will venture to say that god neither did nor does foresee the events which are future nor foreordained his deserts for each one accordingly these things have happened to you in fairness and injustice for you slayed the just one and his prophets before him and now you reject those who hope in him and in him who sent him god the almighty and maker of all things cursing in your synagogues those that believe on christ for you have not the power to lay hands upon us on account of those who now have the mastery so justin who is now sarcastic he's talking down to trifo says that circumcision of the flesh is only for jews and jews are circumcised only because they're rebellious and evil before god that's his viewpoint that is circumcision has always been more a punishment and a curse than a blessing and further the jews have no place in leading christians that's what it means by laying upon us because gentile christians are now in control they have the mastery a little more of justin moreover that god enjoined you to keep the sabbath and imposed on you other precepts for a sign as i have already said that's on account of your unrighteousness and that of your fathers moreover you were commanded to abstain from certain kinds of food in order that you might keep god before you eye before your eyes while you ate and drink seeing that you were prone and very ready to just depart from his knowledge so what we see is that by about 150 a.d it had become doctrine that christians not only should not obey the law they saw god's commandments as inherently bad and essentially god created them for what to be a curse set upon a people the hebrews and given to them due to their unrighteousness it gets worse it gets worse from here forward as the early church fathers that followed justin martyr became more and more entrenched in anti-jewish anti-law rhetoric and doctrine until we come to the time of the council of nicaea in 325 a.d which began as a series of ecumenical council meetings that wrote and then forever changed forever embedded itself within christianity those same anti-jewish anti-law views of justin martyr that would have startled and dismayed the earliest church father clement of rome now sadly justin martyr is held up by the institutional church as exemplary it's his views that it would be taken dearly and more or less followed his doctrine therefore it's not hard to trace what happened within christianity that it became an anti-law of moses and anti-jewish religion as it corresponds directly to the deaths of peter paul and john and the end of authority in the church of jewish apostles and gentiles like clement of rome and then the takeover of gentiles who very quickly abandoned and then outlawed anything within christianity that even resembled something that the jews did by definition this had to include no further obedience to the law of moses the end of observing god appointed times like sabbath the biblical feasts and the ordinance of male circumcision and so much more i believe i said enough to get my point across it was not my intention to teach a course on the early church fathers today but rather just to show you the path that was taken so early in the development of christianity to disavow the law of moses so we're going to stop here now and we're going to go back to matthew chapter 8. now we ended the last time in verse 13 of matthew chapter eight the story of the roman centurion in capernaum asking yeshua to heal his ill house slave now while it's erroneously taught that this is about a gentile coming to faith in jesus christ as lord and savior that is not at all evident in the story there's nothing said about a conversion it's only the centauri centurion knew of or was eyewitness to probably yeshua's miraculous healing powers so he asked him if he would do the same for his house slave now obviously the servant was was dear to that roman centurion's heart now yeshua was not astonished because his gentile soldier had a religious faith in yeshua or perhaps was a secret convert such was not the case rather he saw this this unyielding trust in yeshua's ability to heal as a very good illustration for the jews to pattern themselves after as an unyielding type and depth of faith that they ought to have in god but because so many jews in general he calls them those born for the kingdom have nothing like this kind of faith then christ says the consequence is they will not be admitted into the kingdom of heaven but rather will be thrown into the darkness outside of it bottom line a deep unequivocal trust in god is needed to be a part of his kingdom a trust that is reflected in their lives and in their actions simply being born of a hebrew heritage does not give any jew a free ticket into the kingdom of heaven only those jews who heed the warning shall enter the kingdom let's read just a little bit more open up your bibles to matthew chapter eight matthew chapter eight if you have a complete jewish bible we're going to be on page one two three two twelve thirty two twelve thirty two i'm going to read just verses 14 to 17. yeshua went to kefa's home that's peter's home and there saw kefa's mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever and he touched her hand and the fever left her and she got up began helping him and when evening came many people held in the power of demons were brought to him and he expelled the spirits with a word and he healed all who were ill this was done to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet yeshua isaiah he himself took our weaknesses and bore our diseases now the gospel of mark also reports on this story of uh yeshua going to peter's house to tend to peter's ill mother-in-law before we discuss it let's just read mark's version it's just a couple of verses in mark 1 29-31 mark reports it this way they left the synagogue and went with yaakov that's that's uh uh james and jochen and john to the home of shimon that simon peter and andrew now shimon's mother-in-law was lying sick with a fever and they told yeshua about her and he came and he took her by the hand and lifted her onto her feet and that fever left her and she began helping them okay so we learned from mark that yeshua had been in a synagogue in capernaum along with his brother james and his disciple john the eventual writer of revelation now this has to have occurred after yeshua had returned to capernaum from speaking his sermon on the mount now although it's hard to tell when because mark never even mentions the sermon on the mount the three men went to peter's shimon's house apparently the disciple andrew was also living there at the time where christ would perform yet another miracle healing now one takeaway from these couple of verses is peter indeed was a married man although his wife and the existence of children is never explicitly mentioned now yeshua touched peter's mother-in-law by taking her hand and she was healed specifically of her fever then because the healing was immediate she got up out of her sick bed and began to serve yeshua now in the jewish culture of that day as it pertains to women to serve him didn't mean to hold a religious meeting rather merely meant to prepare and serve jesus a meal the lack of detailed information and jesus's knowledge of this woman's illness implies a closer relationship with her than with others that he healed that is she seems to have been known and familiar to him now i think another but much shorter detour is in order the truth of this story is further validated by the discovery of peter's house in capernaum a rather well-preserved archaeological site peter's house is only a hundred feet or so from the ruins of a large synagogue however those ruins are of a later synagogue built in 300 a.d which very likely matter of fact has pretty well been proven lies upon the ruins of the earlier one that's just the way things were done during biblical times i've had the pleasure of taking many of you there on tours to israel now at present a catholic church is built over the site okay that is to say it is a building built on pillars above the ruins of peter's house to both house to both commemorate it but also to preserve it now peter's house was was pretty typical of that era small simple unadorned however archaeologists discovered that perhaps late in the first century perhaps early in the second there were additions made to it including an octagonal structure you see it here in the picture this octagonal structure that was built around the original with the original walls then plastered and incorporated into this newer structure there's very little doubt that peter's house was well known among early believers and held to be very special probably because it was with peter that yeshua lived in capernaum and so it was used as a small church that was later expanded into a bigger one now during yeshua's day capernaum was a medium-sized town of around 1500 people or so obviously it was a fishing village it was built right on the shore of the sea of galilee but it also lay upon an important trade route so the time the town was a mix of jews and non-jews mostly romans so now doubling back to the story of the roman centurion we read about he lived in capernaum which explains his presence there the romans always carefully guarded the all-important trade routes so a garrison of soldiers stationed there would be logical it would have been a very short walk from yeshu from jesus encounter with the centurion to the centurion's house for christ to heal his house slave so even though the rules of jewish tradition made the homes of gentiles unclean they lived side by side with the jews the romans and the jews encountered and worked with one another daily so the centurion would have been well schooled about jewish attitudes and customs towards gentiles now as a history buff and a former archaeology major university it's always important to me to notice what kinds of materials were used for construction peter's house and the subsequent additions to it over the next couple of centuries were made of the local stone that's usual but that local so stone was called basalt and basalt is volcanic in origin in fact volcano that spewed out the basalt and lava that came to be used for the construction of capernaum is to be found at what is known today as the golan heights that's essentially an extinct volcano so the buildings and houses that time were very rough looking although the hardness of basalt stone made those homes really sturdy and it's allowed these structures to survive for centuries because they're and they're going to survive for many more but you know what their real enemy is earthquakes so the first and most obvious clue that the present synagogue in capernaum isn't the original one from christ time is that it was built using limestone which had to come from some distance away that's an expensive operation that a village of jewish fishermen could never have contemplated so although christ was born in bethlehem and he lived for many years with his parents in uh nazareth during his days of ministry on earth he lived most of the time in capernaum now luke's version of this story put several pieces of it together so we're going to conclude today with this story this is luke's version starting in luke 7 1. when yeshua had finished speaking to the people he went back to kafar nahum that's copper capernaum and a roman army officer there had a servant that he regarded highly who was sick to the point of death and hearing about yeshua the officer sent some jewish elders to him with the request that he come and healed his servant they came to yeshua and pleaded earnestly with them he really deserves you to have you do this for he loves our people in fact he built the synagogue for us okay not the limestone one the basalt one that's under the limestone one okay so yeshua went with them he had not gone far from the house when the officer sent friends who said to him sir don't trouble yourself i'm not worthy to have you come under my roof this is why i didn't presume to approach you myself instead just give a command and let my servant recover for i to him a man said under authority i have soldiers under me and i say to this one go he goes to another come he comes and to my slave i say do this he does this yeshua was astonished at him when he heard this and he turned and he said to the crowd following him i tell you not even in israel have i found such trust when the messengers got back to the officer's house they found the servant in good health we'll continue in matthew next week [Music] foreign [Music] missions

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Keywords: Jesus, God, Yeshua, Christ, Torah Class, Seed of Abraham, Tom Bradford, Matthew, New Testament, Son of God, Bible, Hebrew Roots, Hebrew Heritage, Bible Study, Christian, Christianity, Jews, Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes

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Length: 51min 40sec (3100 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020