Lesson 67 - Matthew 19 & 20

[Music] in matthew chapter 19 we find the story of the rich man who asked yeshua how he could obtain eternal life and we find the same story in mark and luke as well with only minor differences so let's re-read it open your bibles to matthew 19. and we're going to start reading at verse 16. it's just a few verses matthew 19 verse 16. a man approached yeshua and he said rabbi what good thing should i do in order to have eternal life and he said to him why are you asking me about good there is one who is good but if you want to obtain eternal life observe the meat's vote observe the commandments and the man asked him which ones yeshua says don't murder don't commit adultery don't steal don't give false testimony on our father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself and the young man said to him well i've kept all these things where do i fall short and yeshua said to him well if you're serious about reaching the goal goal and sell your possessions give it to the poor and you will have riches in heaven then come follow me but when the young man heard this he went away sad because he was wealthy now i want you to just turn your bibles over just a few pages now to mark chapter 10 and we're going to read mark's version of the same story that starts in verse 17 it too is short mark 10 chapter 17 and we'll i mean rather chapter 10 verse 17 we'll start reading there as he was starting on his way a man ran up to him and kneeled down in front of him and asked good rabbi what should i do to obtain eternal life and yeshua said to him why are you calling me good no one is good except god you know the commandments don't murder don't commit adultery don't steal don't give false testimony don't defraud honor your father and mother rabbi he said i've kept all these since i was a boy and yeshua looking at him felt love for him and said to him you're missing one thing go sell whatever you own give it to the poor and you will have riches in heaven then come follow me shocked by this word he went away sad because he was a wealthy man now luke's version is nearly word for word of marx so we're not going to go to the gospel of luke who has the same story mark adds an element of emotion that isn't there in matthew where he says yeshua looking at him felt love for him but otherwise it's nearly the same now we discussed the story last week and we're going to complete it today so i'm going to just briefly review it to a modern christian when we read the words what must i do to obtain eternal life we have a different idea of what that means because our church doctrines have taught us to think that way generally it means that by placing our trust in jesus as lord and savior after our physical death our souls and at some point our transformed bodies will have a pleasant eternal afterlife living in perfect harmony with god and this of course is true we must be careful however not to read that doctrinal understanding back into this passage because that cannot be what this young man who approached yeshua was thinking i mean for one reason the knowledge that yeshua is the messiah was at this moment a closely guarded secret among the 12 disciples at the order of their master for another the idea that yeshua would go to the cross and in his death atonement for them would be made and that this would lead to eternal life and god's presence was nowhere yet presented nor was it present in mainstream jewish tradition in fact there is no evidence that at this point this is what the 12 disciples were thinking about the outcome of their master being the messiah thus the rich man had to have been thinking in different terms perhaps along the lines of some undefined means of living beyond a normal lifespan that also involved taking his wealth and status with him so he was merely seeking an answer to a burning question he was seeking it from a wise holy man it was not that he considered that in some way jesus would be a facilitator or be part of this man's eternal life so yeshua answers the man's question in a rather straightforward way well within the jewish context and way of thinking of the times by telling him to obey the commandments of the torah he specifically names the commandments of the second tablet that is the commandments given to moses on mount sinai that had to do with interpersonal human relationships now what while not included in matthew's gospel marx and luke's say that the young man responded that he had obeyed these commandments since he was a boy all right inferring that even before the age of accountability as a torah observant person to a fault he was at least that in his own mind now since the young man believed that he had kept the commandments perfectly then he asked what else he must do and yeshua answers that he should sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor see the thing is in jewish culture alms giving charity this was considered to be a high virtue and the wealthy were expected to be very visible alms givers it's in a sense by giving alms then this was seen as an act of generosity that made it okay that made it righteous for a man to be wealthy in the midst of so many impoverished people so yeshua sort of raised the bar on that jewish tradition by saying that if the man was going to pursue eternal life through perfect obedience to the commandments then to love his neighbor perfectly meant to sell his wealth and give it to the needy but there's another sense we need to view this statement in that that that doesn't try to find a way around the obvious jesus says that to obtain eternal life the man should obey the law of moses that didn't startle you a little bit you're not paying attention to what i just told you the first part of obtaining eternal life according to christ was obeying the law and specifically doing good deeds in accordance with the ten commandments that dreaded working your way to heaven scenario that's so off-putting to evangelical christianity even when yeshua continues that to more perfectly obey the commandments in the spirit intended the rich man should give away everything he's he's accumulated does this not amount to works and deeds to gain eternal life what gives well if we stopped here this would indeed be confusing where does god's free grace enter into the equation comes only when yeshua finishes his conversation with the words then come and follow me as much as christian doctrine implies that christ's only response to the rich man inquiring about eternal life that we should pay any attention to anyway was follow me that isn't all that he said about it is it so there are two parts to gaining eternal life in christ's response to the rich man not either or choice a choice b both first obey the commandments of god especially in the doing of good deeds and second follow christ both all the new testament writers wrote yeshua taught in the context of obeying the law of moses as the necessary beginning of the route to eternal life but it was not the completion of it christ was that completion the most prominent branches of the church have for centuries separated those two requirements yeshua has just laid out that for eternal life you must obey the law but has not the church just discarded the first part that he said it has the doctrine became that only following christ is how we obtain eternal life with god and if we include any works any obedience to the law as part of that requirement it makes us legalists who are trying to work our way to heaven the irony is that following christ includes obedience to the torah as he's already clearly stated in matthew 5 17-19 and then again here in matthew 19 17. the new testament writers urge us to understand that doing what the torah says to do taking concrete action doing good works and deeds is mandatory for jehovah worshipers paul writes often about this subject but probably romans 2 and 3 are his most detailed now i urge you to fully read those two chapters and also to go to torahclass.com for the the romans study but here are just a couple of verses for you to ponder in romans 2 verses 7 and 8 to those who seek glory honor and immortality by perseverance and doing good he will pay back eternal life but to those who are self-seeking and who disobey the truth and instead obey evil he will pay back right wrath and anger romans 2 13 for it is not merely the hearers of torah whom god considers righteous rather it's the doers of what torah says who will be made righteous in god's sight the king james version interestingly puts it even more strongly it puts it this way for not the hearers of the law are just before god but the doers of the law shall be justified jesus biological brother james also speaks on the subject in james 2 17-20 his real name was jacob by the way thus faith by itself unaccompanied by actions is dead but someone will say well you have faith and i have actions well show me this faith of yours without the actions and i'll show you my faith by my actions oh you believe that god is won well good for you the demons believe it too the thought makes them shudder with fear but foolish fellow do you want to be shown that such faith apart from actions is barren james 2 24 you see that a person is declared righteous because of actions not because of faith alone see these new testament authors are teaching what yeshua was teaching the rich man good works from following the law are they're important and they are the inauguration of one's faith journey but following him that was the necessary culmination of the road to eternal life one apart from the other is incomplete well the rich man in our story did the first requirement but in denying christ erected a roadblock to eternal life christ told him to first sell his wealth and give it to the poor than to follow him the rich man could not bring himself to give wholehearted obedience to jesus because of what it meant he would have to give up his material wealth so i got a question for you does this mean that people are to give away more than they need is wealth itself a sign of not following christ have we encountered a command of christ for all followers to take vows of poverty is the call a requirement to renounce the material in order to take up the cross countless have taken it this way including many early church fathers such as origen cyprian and sainted folks such as francis of assisi and although the essence of the dead sea scrolls didn't do so to follow christ they did disavow material possessions and share all the head yet by no means are we to take this one conversation with a wealthy man as an all-encompassing proverb about wealth clearly yeshua knew that the obstacle that stood between this particular rich man and true eternal life was his familiar and secure wealth now most of us that have said yes to christ have had some sort of obstacle that we had to overcome or perhaps give something up and it's going to be that way for nearly everyone who has yet to accept god's great gift of grace to us perhaps it's wealth but more often it's going to be something else now even so then is now material possession and especially if one has great wealth can be a serious obstacle to our faith often not only because of the false security it seems to bring to us but also to the high cost that we paid to obtain it and continue to pay to maintain it open your bibles again and we're going to reread the remainder of matthew chapter 19. we're going to start at verse 23 verse 23 matthew 19 verse 23 then yeshua said to us tell me yes i tell you that it will be very hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven furthermore i tell you that it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god and while in the talmudim his disciples heard this they were utterly amazed well then who they ask can be saved and yeshua look at them and said humanly this is impossible but with god everything is possible kepha peter replied look we've left everything and followed you so what will we have and yeshua said to them yes i tell you that in the regenerated world when the son of man sits on his glorious throne you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones and judge the 12 tribes of israel everyone who has left houses brothers sisters father mother children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times more and he will obtain eternal life but many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first so in reference to the rich man's decision not to follow christ because it would have meant giving up his wealth yeshua turns to his disciples and he gives them a saying we've all heard countless times i tell you it's easy for camel to pass through the eye of a needle and for a rich man to enter the kingdom of him first i want to dispel a belief that i had taught as true up until a few years ago but have since learned otherwise that there was a small gate in the wall of jerusalem called the eye of the needle where folks could enter after dark and this is what jesus is referring to it turns out that after much of an investigation there's simply no good basis for such a belief there is no ancient literature jewish or otherwise that mentions it no physical or archaeological archaeological evidence to support it there is no long-held jewish tradition about such a gate rather it meant similarly to yeshua's comment that faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain it's a metaphor where the tiniest is compared to the largest that is a camel you see was the largest land animal indigenous to the middle east the largest and of course the eye of a sewing needle was extremely small by design so says yeshua for a rich man to enter through the kingdom of heaven was as difficult as the largest land animal to pass through the tiny hole of the needle in other words it was a memorable absurdity but what's his point all yeshua is doing is he's summarizing to his disciples the outcome of the conversation he just had with the rich man who walked away a conversation the disciples had witnessed the wealthy are more likely to cling to their wealth and to trust in yeshua and the unknown journey that such a trust brings with it but please notice yeshua was speaking about degree of difficulty not that wealth of itself barred a man from the kingdom nor that no wealthy man would ever be able to trust him and this dishonest the astonished disciples then exclaimed well then who can be saved see here's the picture that's being drawn the wealthy were the privileged and of course held the highest social status they were catered to bowed down to and given the best seats at banquets and at feasts even in the synagogues this was the jewish aristocracy whereby the aristocrats were above all others and the poor mainly existed to serve them so if a wealthy aristocrat can only rarely find a way into the kingdom what's the disciples conclusion well then who can see jewish tradition was that abundance and wealth was an unmistakable sign of divine favor deuteronomy 28 seems to teach that abundance was indeed a sign of heavenly blessing listen to this from deuteronomy 28 if you listen closely to what adonai or god says observing and obeying all his commandments which i'm giving you today adonai your god will raise you high above all the nations and all the following blessings will be yours in abundance if you do what adonai or god says and then the next 12 verses go on to list these incredible blessings of abundance that god will bestow on those who obey him so then if it was nearly impossible they thought for a rich man who was blessed by god to be saved how could a poor person who didn't enjoy such a position with god have any hope whatsoever interestingly to that question yeshua at first validates their fear he says it is humanly impossible yeshua's response at the moment is not if a rich man can enter the kingdom but rather the disciples thought of then who can now obviously they were thinking about their own ability to have eternal life and to paraphrase his answer is no one can yet there's hope jesus concludes the thought with but with god everything is possible i want to be clear christ is not saying that god's attribute of omnipotence somehow assures that all jews or all humans for that matter attain salvation here we have encountered the word saved and the greek for that is sozo it means to be rescued from a destruction or maybe to be kept safe but again do not read into the disciples words the standard christian meaning that to be saved means to have our sins forgiven which of course is true by no means with the disciples thinking in those terms for them the kingdom of heaven was a place of safety and security on earth so they wanted in badly for them that was salvation and since yeshua had just told the rich man to divest himself of everything as a prerequisite to entering the kingdom which was also in some undefined way connected to eternal life then peter asks well then if we who have left everything as you just instructed and followed you which was the very thing the rich man refused to do then what will we have that is what's the outcome of our allegiance to yeshua what's our reward for going all in yeshua goes on to answer and employ by employing an end times scenario by bringing in daniel's son of man sitting on his throne i can't say it strongly enough yeshua is now projecting something well into their future whether the disciples understood that or not and from his teaching perhaps we can learn something about the order of end times events because he says when he sits on his throne it will be in an age of a regenerated a recreated world and at that same time the 12 disciples will also sit on their thrones as judges over the tribes of israel now this means judges in the sense of the judges of old as a ruling class not judging in the sense of declaring people guilty and condemning them therefore this likely is not speaking about something that happens even in the era of the millennial kingdom but rather what follows when the earth is destroyed and regenerated re-created revelation 21 1. then i saw a new heaven and a new earth for the old heaven and the old earth had passed away and the sea was no longer there also i saw the holy city new jerusalem coming down out of heaven from god prepared like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband i heard a loud voice from the throne say see god shkina is with mankind and he will live with them they will be his people and he himself god with them will be their god a few more verses down in revelation 21 we read of god and yeshua seated on thrones and of the city of jerusalem having 12 gates each one with the name of one of the twelve tribes upon it this may be inferring the existence of the twelve disciples as the twelve judges over the twelve tribes sitting on their thrones just as yeshua has promised since this is taking place inside the israelite city of jerusalem so the answer jesus gives to peter is that the 12 disciples who gave up everything to follow yeshua will in the end be rewarded with more that is even imaginable in this present age on this present earth yet yeshua tempers that by saying that everyone not only the 12 disciples that has left everything and if necessary everyone behind to follow christ will receive a hundred times more 100 times more being a figure of speech not as a precise number of multiplication now perhaps one of the most wondrous things that we as god worshipers as jesus followers and students of the holy word ought to take from christ's promises to his disciples and to his jewish followers is this israel has a future even a glorious future throughout eternity the prophets speak of it as well although for 1700 years the churches said that god transferred that glorious future from israel to the gentile church my brothers and sisters god isn't done with israel and he has not turned their blessings over to the gentile church as some propose in his gospel matthew sees the kingdom of heaven as mainly about two things messiah yeshua and the restoration of israel in academic terms the god of rather the gospel of matthew presents an israel-centric worldview the question for us is does matthew see what he has recorded on one level or on two that is does he see jesus and they regenerated israel as a reborn physical tangible golden era of israel with its jewish king messiah another king david that was the centuries-old jewish hope and expectation or does matthew see it as something that happens well into the future at the end times or does he see it as both my opinion is that matthew mainly has the traditional jewish worldview that was earthbound and israel-centric but he was honest and obedient enough to write down through divine inspiration things he just didn't understand he could not comprehend in the first century things that we today have a better understanding of because more time in history is passed the final words of this chapter once again foresee one of the interesting paradigms about the kingdom of heaven that yeshua has been teaching it's been a theme a reversal of fortunes the economic and social dynamics of today will not remain the same in the kingdom in the kingdom of heaven the first and the present age will be last in the kingdom and the last in the present age will be first in the kingdom those who enter the kingdom of heaven with nothing because they gave up everything they had to be there will be rewarded with the highest status those with the most status on earth the first but choose to put their faith in the security of their wealth and power they'll be reduced to the last in this case the last will be left on the outside of the kingdom looking in let's move on to matthew chapter 20. open your bibles to matthew chapter 20. matthew chapter 20 starting at verse 1. now the kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who went out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard and after agreeing with the workers on a wage of one denarius standard daily wage he sent them off to his vineyard then going out about nine in the morning he saw more men standing around in the market square doing nothing and he said to them you go to the vineyard too i'll pay you a fair wage so they went noon again around three in the afternoon he did the same thing about an hour before sundown he went out found still others standing around and asked them why have you been standing here all day doing nothing and they said to him because no one's hired us you too he told them go to the vineyard now when the evening came the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman call the workers pay them their wages starting with the last ones hired ending with the first the workers who came about an hour before sunset each received a denarius so the workers who came first expected they'd get more but each of them also received just the denarius and on receiving their wages he began grumbling to the farmer these late comers have worked only one hour well we've borne the brunt of the day's work and the hot sun yet you have put them on an equal footing with us but he answered running look friend i'm not being unfair with you didn't you agree to work today for a denarius now take your pay and go i choose to give the last worker as much as i'm giving you have it either right to do what i want with what belongs to me or do you begrudge my generosity thus the last ones will be first and the first last and as yeshua was going up to yerushalayim he took the twelve talmudim aside by themselves and he said to them as they went on their way we are now going up to jerusalem where the son of man will be handed over to the head koa name the head priest and the torah teachers they will sentence him to death and turn him over to the to the gentiles who will jeer at him and beat him and execute him on a stake as a criminal but on the third day he will be raised then zavdaya's son came to yeshua with her mother she bowed down begging a favor from him and he said to her what do you want and she replied promise that when you become king these two sons of mine may sit one on your right the other on your left but yeshua answered you people don't know what you're asking can you drink the cup that i'm about to drink they said to him we can and he said to him he said to them yes you will drink my cup but to sit on my right and on my left is not mine to give it's for those for whom my father has prepared it now when the other 10 heard this they were outraged at the two brothers but yeshua called them and said you know that among the gentiles those who are supposed to rule them become tyrants and their superiors become dictators among you it must not be like that on the contrary whoever among you wants to be a leader must become your servant whoever wants to be first must be your slave for the son of man did not come to be served but to serve to give his life as a ransom for many and as they were leaving jericho a large crowd followed followed yeshua two blind men sitting by the side of the road heard that he was passing by and they shouted son of david have pity on us well the crowd scolded them told them to be quiet but they just shouted all the louder lord son of david have pity on us yeshua stopped he called them and he said what do you want me to do for you and they said to him lord open our eyes and filled with tenderness yeshua touched their eyes and instantly they received their sight and they followed him this chapter opens with a truly fascinating parable and as usual the parable is about trying to explain to the jewish people listening to yeshua what the kingdom of heaven is like so he concocts a purely fictional story to teach them yet fictional or not parables often dealt in matters of everyday life just as this one does jesus sets this parable in the backdrop of agriculture something familiar that everyone following him around would understand however for us of the 21st century to understand i'm going to need to explain some of the nuances that needed no explanation for his audience because it was common knowledge so it was just left unsaid a farmer was usually a landowner and therefore a well-to-do man not wealthy necessarily but something that certainly the major majority of jews would have strived for now this farmer had a vineyard and it's implied that the grapes needed to be harvested because he was urgently hiring more workers as the day went on grapes had a very short time frame to be picked a day too soon a day too late and not only would the yield be lessened but the great quality suffered and so it wouldn't bring as good a price at market now a vineyard is a standard symbol for israel that can be found in various places in the old testament such as isaiah 5 and jeremiah 12. this would have been apparent to christ's followers and so they would have understood that israel as the vineyard was at the heart of the story the heart of the parable so the farmer went out he found some workers around daybreak he offered them a denarius to harvest his crop that was the standard wage for a day labor it wasn't considered too little too much it was just fair around three hours later he must have needed more workers so he went back to the market square he saw some men standing around doing nothing told them go to his vineyard he didn't say how much he'd pay only that it would be fair at this point any listener would think that it would be a bit less than the narrative he was paying the first group because the second group would be working fewer hours three more hours pass and the farmer repeats the process then he does it again mid afternoon now finally with only one hour of daylight left for harvesting he goes yet again to the market square finds more men that have been standing around all day doing nothing and says essentially why aren't you working the answer because no one hired us so he hires them sends them out to his vineyard now for a 21st century reader some of the description about the men standing around doing nothing makes it sound as though they're lazy not too interested in working and they sort of had to be coaxed into going to the farmer's vineyard but that's not the case farmers didn't have full-time crews of men to work for them and the average common labor didn't have a steady job rather these men occupied the lowest rung on the economic ladder and they would go to a customary place they'd wait all day long in hopes someone would come along to hire them for that day generally speaking if they didn't get some work their families would either eat very poorly or maybe not at all that evening even if they didn't work a full day and so got substantially less money it was better than nothing so in hiring some workers even if only for an hour or two these workers might get enough to feed their families one sparse meal that evening now another nuance that would have pricked the ears of the jewish listeners is that it was the farmer himself doing the hiring see a landowner usually had a house steward that would go and do such a mundane task as hiring some unskilled workers to labor in the fields for a few hours instead and yeshua's parable this farmer took a personal interest and he did the choosing and the hiring himself in verse 8 day ends time to pay the workers this case the farmer that hired the workers gives his steward the task of doling out to pay although the farmer comes along too to observe he also instructs his steward that he used to pay the last ones to be hired first and the first that were hired were to be paid last lo and behold the men that had worked for only about an hour got paid a denarius a full day's pay and as the men got paid in reverse order of their hiring it finally came to the field workers that had been hired early in the morning and so they had labored all day long and since they had to wait while all the others got paid before them they were upset that they got exactly the same pay for their many hours of toil as for those who barely worked at all seemed totally unfair to them and they grumbled to their employer about it now i imagine that yeshua's listeners probably identified with the grumbling laborers that worked all day long and now exhausted they saw the ones that had hardly worked up a sweat get paid exactly the same these angry laborers say they've worked all day long in the hot sun now the farmer has recompensed them equally the ones that hadn't another nuance whereas most english bible translations speak of the men working in the hot sun or in the heat in fact the e the greek word is kasan it means not only a scorching heat an extreme heat but is the greek for the hebrew hamsin literally it means homscene means east wind but it's actually akin to what they call in southern california santa ana winds that can cause a lot of discomfort and damage they blow in off the hot desert very hot with near zero humidity you can tell i'm a former southern californian invariable it's full of gritty dust you can feel it in your teeth so it's not as though the vineyard workers in the parable were merely working on a typical hot summer day they had been subjected to a brutal adverse weather condition that would challenge anyone's stamina this additional information about the cruel weather merely heightens the matter of fairness the first being put on equal footing with the last some would call it unjust well the farmer responds to the grumblers with no sympathy or understanding at all by saying didn't i give you what i said i would give you what's unfair about that did i choose to give the last workers hired the same amount as i paid use none of your business is this not my vineyard my money and i have the right to choose to be generous to whomever i decide wow jesus parable ends with the words thus the last ones will be first and the first last so now we've had a few examples of the greatest becoming the least and the first the last in order to describe the coming dramatic change that is going to happen when the kingdom of heaven manifests fully the question i put before all of you is this was the farmer fair and just don't those workers have a legitimate perspective is it fair and just to make the last first and the first last and everyone put on an equal footing no matter how little how how much they had toiled in that farmer's vineyard i can tell you right now that if we are honest with ourselves will all say no that's not fair come on fast forwarding to modern times if a person doing an equal task alongside of you with equal education to you equal skills to you working right alongside you got paid just as much pay as you when they worked 1 8 as much time as you and so produced only one eight as much work as you would you find that fair of course you wouldn't as humans see we're instinctively making those sorts of relative comparisons among ourselves fairness may be in the eye of the beholder but by whatever standard it might be in our own eyes we all seek it and we don't like it when our standard of fairness isn't met no doubt this would have been the same conclusion of those first century jews that heard this parable directly from yeshua's mouth in fact the parable was designed to draw its listeners in and shock them because of what the farmer did so since a parable only has one moral to it what's the moral to this one it is that in the kingdom of heaven god's idea of fairness will rule the day and our idea of fairness will be overturned a reversal of standards and status is going to occur the kingdom of heaven will operate upside down from what we're used to in our present age what this mean which means that in many ways the farmer the owner of the vineyard who is meant to represent the king of the kingdom of heaven god has a standard for justness and fairness that is the opposite of the way that humans and this world naturally evaluates it so it is in this sense that the last will be first and the first will be last in the kingdom of heaven now we could probably take the more conventional christian approach and make this parable and do a dozen or more allegories to make each of the several elements within this story have important meanings and many of those allegories might actually express something that is good and true but that doesn't mean that any of them will bring to light the crucial point jesus was making or how his first century jewish public understood it and so that's how we're to understand it when we can finally comprehend that the reversal of the present age human standard of fairness and justice along with status and worth will be divinely the the divinely enforced standard from the kingdom of heaven is the point that you yeshua has been making that it's going to be completely reversed completely reversed then we can indeed draw some reasonable assumptions about what this might look like but we have to do so very carefully so as not to inject something into these assumptions that are entirely off point because we're approaching this through 21st century mostly gentile lenses i can do no better than to quote a comment that brad young who's professor of biblical studies at oral roberts university made about this particular parable to demonstrate just how far off the mark such an allegorical approach to interpreting can be he said this in modern parable interpretation the story of the fair employer is usually viewed as an illustration of the message of grace in christianity which must be contrasted to a theology of works in judaism the gospel parable portrays salvation by grace whereas its jewish counterparts refer to merit through works the grumblers are said to be identified with the jewish leaders i'd have to say that there's more or less sums up the interpretation of this parable that i've been taught all my life until i undertook to immerse myself in a hebrew heritage approach to serious bible study setting aside centuries of man-made doctrines traditions and taboos in order to make room for god's word to speak for itself the rather broadly accepted interpretation within institutional christianity of this parable that brad young rightly exposes misses the point of the parable so badly because of a church insistence to impose doctrines and traditions upon it that in no way reflect the mindset of the jewish christ or of the realities of his first century jewish listeners not unlike the sticky problem jesus was dealing with in his day that jewish law and tradition had so engulfed and overwhelmed biblical truth and teaching that the messianic expectations of the jewish people and the standards they thought to live their lives by and their mindset of what god and his kingdom must be like had veered so far off the mark that they were in grave danger of trusting a false self-righteousness instead of in their divine messiah which was this was only going to lead towards a great disappointment if not their eternal destruction i want to stress this as much as possible to end this lesson because if you're a believer get ready get ready christ has been informing us that the way the kingdom of heaven will eventually operate is going to be shockingly unconventional from the way of the world the church and humanity in general operates today many of our current definitions of fairness and of justice that seem so right normal in our own eyes will be overturned when the kingdom of heaven achieves its fullness adjusting ourselves to god's standard and not his to ours it's going to be a challenge perhaps it would be wise to begin that process as much as possible right now we'll return to chapter 20 next week when the scene changes drastically as christ begins his final journey to jerusalem to face the trials that [Music] await [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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

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Length: 60min 18sec (3618 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021