Participants: Alex Schlusser (Host), Rachael Hyman (Host), Sasha Bolotnikov
Series Code: BTOR
Program Code: BTOR000017
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00:01 You know, maybe one of the greatest teachings
00:03 that Jesus brings to us is found in a passage 00:06 called "The Sermon on the Mount." 00:07 Today on "Back to Our Roots," we are going to explore 00:10 exactly what it was that Jesus thought, stick around. 00:33 Hello and welcome once again to "Back to Our Roots." 00:36 I'm Pastor Alex Schlusser and this is my co-host-- 00:39 Rachel Hyman. 00:40 And we're so happy that you've decided to join us. 00:42 Today we have an extra special program as we explore 00:47 maybe one of the best known passages in the New Testament 00:50 known as "The Sermon on the Mount." 00:52 But today we are going to find out that 00:54 maybe it's better understood 00:56 as Jesus' teachings on the Bible or on Torah. 01:00 So, Rachel, when we talk about "The Sermon on the Mount," 01:02 when you hear that mention, 01:04 what's the first thing that comes to mind for you? 01:06 You know, one of my favorite verses in 01:08 "The Sermon on the Mount" is when Jesus is talking about 01:11 how we shouldn't judge others or before we were to judge others, 01:15 we need to take this back out of our own eye first. 01:17 There are just so many beautiful lessons 01:20 that Jesus had on "The Sermon on the Mount." 01:21 Oh, yeah, and, you know, that's as a pastor, 01:25 that's one of the places that so many times I have sent people 01:28 that are really trying to understand who Jesus is 01:32 to spend time in those chapters 01:36 because it really brings out His heart, 01:40 I mean, it's His commentary on the Bible 01:43 and who better to bring commentary 01:45 than the word Himself. 01:47 Yes, than God. Yeah, absolutely. 01:49 So we are going to get right into it. 01:52 And we are going to ask our special guest. 01:56 You know, I mean he's with us all the time. 01:58 I hate to call him guest anymore. 01:59 He is a regular, but Dr. Alexander Bolotnikov. 02:03 We call him Sasha. 02:05 Sasha, welcome once again. 02:07 Thank you, Alex. 02:08 It's good as always to see you. 02:10 And you, Rachel. Good to see you. 02:11 So, Sasha, today, 02:12 we are gonna talk about "The Sermon on the Mount" 02:16 or as I've already alluded to 02:18 it's Jesus' teachings on the Torah, on the Bible. 02:24 And I know that you have some very interesting observations. 02:27 We were talking about this earlier 02:29 about how "The Sermon on the Mount" 02:33 as its known has this very this-- 02:38 What do you call it, a pattern 02:41 that follows one of the Psalms almost identically, right? 02:46 Exactly, this is Psalm number 1. 02:50 And if you look at "The Sermon on the Mount," 02:53 and how it starts, it's basically blessings, you know. 02:59 Blessed are those who are poor in spirit and so forth. 03:02 Right, in Psalm 1, "Blessed is the man 03:04 who walks not in the counsel of the wicked." 03:06 Exactly, so what you have here 03:08 is like "The Sermon on the Mountain" 03:11 is an echo of Psalm 1. 03:14 You have blessed is the man and blessed are those, 03:18 blessed are those ten times. 03:20 And that's known as the beatitudes actually. 03:22 Exactly, you're right. 03:23 And then what you have next in Psalm 1, 03:26 you have-- But in the law of the Lord 03:30 or I would prefer to say 03:32 in the Torah of the Lord is His heart 03:36 and the law of the Lord He meditates day and night. 03:40 And this is exactly what follows in "The Sermon on the Mount." 03:46 After Jesus speaks His beatitudes, 03:50 He suddenly switches back to the topic and saying, 03:55 "By the way, don't you think 03:57 that I have come to abolish the law?" 04:00 In English, to abolish the Torah. 04:03 And then there is a large section 04:07 of "The Sermon on the Mountain" 04:09 which dedicates to the Torah, 04:13 and then going back He meditates day and night. 04:18 And here you go to the meditation. 04:21 When you pray, lock yourself in the room 04:24 and He gives the whole teaching of the meditation and prayer. 04:30 And then at the end, Psalm number 1 says, 04:34 not the same with the wicked. 04:38 And Jesus goes and discuses the wicked. 04:42 Those who, you know, say in your name, 04:46 we have cast it out the demon. 04:49 "I never knew you. 04:51 Go away from me you who make lawlessness." 04:56 So this is just fascinating to see this parallels 05:01 that the whole sermon on the mount 05:03 is not a new teaching of the totally new religion 05:08 and it's actually drawing from Psalm number 1 and expanding it. 05:14 And it goes even deeper when you bring up this idea 05:17 that what Jesus is teaching 05:19 and His intention is to create something new. 05:23 I want to explore that now 05:25 probably for the better part of this program 05:30 that Jesus, this common, I think misunderstanding 05:36 is that He came with an intention 05:40 to create something very different. 05:43 Some people would say-- Like a new religion. 05:44 Well, Christianity. Right. 05:46 But I don't think we see that at all. 05:49 And I think that especially through 05:52 "The Sermon on the Mount," 05:54 we see Jesus drawing on teachings 05:58 and understandings that were accepted of the day 06:03 and we are going to look at that, 06:05 but I think that the first thing we have to notice 06:09 is that He begins to-- 06:12 I don't want to somewhat say come against, 06:14 but it's almost as if He is speaking against 06:18 what would be known as the oral traditions 06:21 because I think that in the first century 06:24 so much of what ruled the people was far less the Bible 06:31 and far more the accepted oral traditions of the day that, 06:35 and I think in some ways He talks about the burdens 06:38 that the Pharisees and the Sadducees 06:40 were placing upon the people were their interpretations, 06:44 but not so much their interpretations of the Bible, 06:48 but these extra biblical things that were being formulated. 06:52 And we see Jesus, Sasha, as He teaches. 06:57 And many times you can read this 06:59 in "The Sermon on the Mount" 07:02 where Jesus will say, you have heard it said, 07:04 but I tell you is-- 07:08 and I really think that a lot of that is 07:10 looking at this oral tradition 07:13 and looking at how they were misinterpreting Him, the Bible. 07:19 Well, that's the very important point you noticed, Alex. 07:25 You can see this in the Gospel of Matthew as a contrast. 07:31 The previous chapter that describes 07:34 the temptation of Jesus in the desert. 07:37 Devil throw something upon Jesus 07:41 and Jesus' respond is, it is written. 07:46 And when Jesus respond, it is written 07:51 then He quotes from scripture 07:53 and basically from the Book of Deuteronomy. 07:56 Well, by the way, that shows 08:01 that how Jesus really draws from the Torah and not rejects it. 08:06 Well, what we see in "The Sermon on the Mountain" 08:10 is often appears as a quotation from the Torah but they're not. 08:18 And Jesus is very specifically, 08:21 it has been spoken by the ancient. 08:26 I give you an example, it has been spoken, 08:29 love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 08:33 What we have here, love your neighbor as yourself, 08:39 we have it in Leviticus 19, but hate your enemy, 08:44 we have none of it in the Torah. 08:48 None of it anywhere. 08:49 In fact, we have in the contrary. 08:51 For example, in the Book of Exodus 22 08:56 it says, "If you have found the oxen of your enemy 09:03 or his donkey fallen under the burden, 09:07 you come and help your enemy out." 09:11 If you have found the ox 09:13 or the donkey of your enemy going astray, 09:17 take this donkey, take this animal 09:20 and bring it to your enemy. 09:22 So when Jesus comes, I tell you love your enemy. 09:27 This is not in anyway a contradiction to the Torah. 09:32 In fact, it's generalization. 09:35 The Torah gives His principles based on examples. 09:40 The oxen or the donkey is for example, 09:45 but Jesus takes this example and basically develops it 09:49 into the principle of loving the enemy. 09:54 What he deals with is oral tradition. 09:58 Particularly, hate your enemy, 10:01 it was a tradition of Essenes and Zealots. 10:05 Essenes who lived in Qumran. 10:07 The Essenes by the way, these are the people 10:11 that are famous in connection with 10:14 what is known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. 10:16 This was the community that existed in an area called Qumran 10:20 and they were separatists, really. 10:23 I don't want to spend a lot of time going into who they were, 10:26 but they had withdrawn from the accepted society 10:29 because of their beliefs and their teachings. 10:31 Some people, I mean maybe this is like opening a can of worms, 10:34 but we won't chase it, but some people believe 10:36 that John the Baptist may have had some connections, but-- 10:40 We are not going there, there is no connection. 10:42 And particularly why because from the reading of the Essenes 10:46 what they wrote is they really spewed hatred 10:50 toward anybody who did not believe like that. 10:53 So let's get back here then 10:56 to how Jesus is expressing the Torah. 11:00 Some particular examples we want to look at 11:03 where He makes mention of what seems to be 11:05 a very strange little statement, jot and tittle. 11:09 Not one jot or tittle will be erased or removed 11:14 until everything has been fulfilled. 11:16 So what exactly is He saying there? 11:18 Well, this is a very important part. 11:22 Jot is the Hebrew letter yodh 11:26 which looks like a little apostrophe 11:29 and tittle is a stroke, it's better to say. 11:33 This is a Hebrew letter vav which you created by draw 11:39 keeping the line down the little. 11:41 Just drawing it down. Drawing it down. 11:43 So what you see when you read the ancient scrolls in Hebrew, 11:48 you often have to really look with a magnifying glass 11:52 to see whether it's a letter sound like Y 11:57 or it sound like V to read. 11:59 So what Jesus was referring is the scribble art. 12:05 And that's how anybody in the ancient Judea go to study. 12:12 You know, they go to study the Torah. 12:15 They have to start learning to read and to write. 12:19 So Jesus while speaking in His beatitudes 12:24 about the qualities of the character. 12:27 He said, "I'm not going to forsake 12:30 the main principles of the Torah. 12:33 And so My disciples are going to know exactly what other-- 12:39 What the disciples of other rabbis know about the Torah." 12:43 My disciples-- Basically what Jesus is doing 12:46 He is a little bit exaggerating, He parabolizing, 12:49 but jot and tittle in His high parably, 12:55 basically signifies a meticulous approach, 12:59 a detailed approach to the study of the scripture 13:03 that Jesus does. 13:04 And so the next section after that He really illustrates 13:10 He really illustrates what, how do they study 13:15 and they go, for example, 13:17 they give example like, divorce, like Deuteronomy 24. 13:23 Again He refers to the wrong interpretation. 13:27 It is written. He said it is spoken by ancient. 13:32 "Whoever divorces his wife 13:35 has to write to him a certificate of divorce." 13:38 This is a typical example of the misuse of the Torah 13:42 because Pharisees often like to cite 13:47 portions of the Torah out of context. 13:50 You know, I'm thinking as you're saying that, 13:52 you know, we brought up the Jesus 13:57 when He goes into the wilderness 13:59 in His little battle with the devil 14:02 and how the devil does exactly the same thing 14:05 that the devil takes the scriptures 14:07 and quotes them to Jesus rightly, 14:10 He quotes the words correctly, but completely out of context. 14:17 And so they really don't have the same meaning. 14:20 And, boy, isn't that so true even today? Oh, yes. 14:24 That people are constantly 14:26 being swayed to the left or to the right 14:29 because of those that would take advantage of scriptures 14:34 by quoting them out of context. 14:38 As Jesus is teaching, we've also talked, Sasha and I 14:43 about how this animosity begins to form during this time, 14:51 the Sadducees and the Pharisees, 14:54 the leaders begin to build this seeming dislike, 14:59 intense dislike for Jesus. 15:02 And I think that there is couple of things that play out 15:04 that we see in His language in "The Sermon on The Mount" 15:08 and what we keep referring to how Jesus is saying. 15:11 You've heard it said or you've heard it said by the ancients 15:14 referring really to the oral tradition, 15:16 referring to the things that 15:17 the Pharisees and the Sadducees were teaching, 15:21 but I say to you. 15:23 And I've always believed, Sasha, that-- 15:26 Again, this is a case where 15:27 Jesus is doing something that was not accepted. 15:31 And even today, it's kind of a gray area 15:34 and that is that in Jewish tradition 15:37 a rabbi would not teach on his own authority. 15:40 He would stand on the authority of those 15:42 that had gone before him. 15:44 So, is it really possible that that not only, 15:47 but one of the reasons why he runs into such deep resistance 15:51 that the Pharisees, of course, 15:53 they don't like the fact that he's teaching, 15:55 they don't like that he's moving the people away, 15:58 but they become jealous of the following, 16:02 they become afraid that they're going to loose the power 16:04 and they also are upset that he is now teaching 16:09 and saying that you've heard it said, but I say to you. 16:13 And it's kind of like, who is this upstart, 16:16 young rabbi teaching on his own authority? 16:20 Well, they didn't even want to consider him a rabbi 16:23 because, you know, unlike Sadducees 16:26 who had a very political dislike to Jesus 16:29 because Sadducees were the priests, 16:31 you know, the elite people 16:33 who were given authority by Romans 16:37 and they saw Jesus as a political threat 16:40 because they thought that Jesus was gonna raise the revolt 16:44 and Romans will come down hard and take away their authority. 16:49 You know, which they held on the temple and on Jerusalem. 16:52 The Pharisees to my surprise, to everybody's surprise, 16:57 basically if you look at the Gospel of Matthew, 17:01 Gospel of Matthew is really 17:03 a strong criticism of the Pharisees. 17:06 And the "Sermon on The Mount," 17:08 the way how Mathew composes the gospel, 17:11 that's begins with the specific critic of the Pharisees. 17:17 You know, the word Pharisees itself is, 17:20 you know, the interpreter of scripture. 17:23 So here Jesus comes and He criticizes 17:28 the Pharisees sake interpretation of scripture 17:34 and the problem is while Jesus is 17:40 in the same mindset with the Pharisees on the-- 17:43 Hey, we need to study scripture, we need to understand. 17:47 But the difference between Jesus and the Pharisees is that 17:50 as you mentioned, he teaches on His own authority. 17:54 Jesus is not a disciple of anybody. 17:58 You see, before Jesus-- But, you know, 18:01 right at the turn of the eras the way how it works 18:05 like the year zero plus-minus 10, 18:08 there were two great teachers of Pharisees, 18:12 Shammai and Hillel. 18:14 And Pharisees were broken up into two groups. 18:18 They were called, one was called the Disciples of Shammai 18:22 and the other was called the Disciples of Hillel. 18:25 And if you belong to that camp, 18:28 you kind of have to stand in your packing order 18:32 before you reach a certain level of authority 18:37 and you refer, yeah, 18:38 I'm a Hillelite, I'm a Shammaite. 18:40 Jesus was none of them. 18:44 While coming back to the issue of divorce, 18:47 Jesus teaching about He who divorces his wife 18:51 accept the case of adultery. 18:53 That's exactly what Shammai taught. 18:56 Hillelites thought that anybody could divorce his wife 19:00 even if she spoiled his soup. 19:03 Jesus strongly criticized that. 19:05 That's funny. Jesus strongly criticized. 19:08 So we can see that Jesus 19:10 does not is in align with rabbinic teaching, 19:16 but because He is not endorsed by them 19:21 that causes the jealously. 19:23 So the dislike of Jesus by Pharisees 19:26 is very, where it shows the internal character problem 19:31 of some of this people 19:32 who see He's doing the same thing, 19:35 but they just don't want to give up. 19:37 We can see that in ministries today unfortunately. 19:39 Yes. Yes. 19:41 Well, and Jesus is much to their dislike, 19:48 He is not all about the power and the prestige and position. 19:55 You know, we have a show coming up 19:57 a little bit later in this season 19:59 that we are going to explore the rabbi Jesus 20:01 and really look at who He was as a rabbi. 20:05 And He really brought out an upside down kingdom. 20:10 You know that for Him 20:11 those that were the least were the greatest. 20:15 And we'll talk so much about that. 20:18 Sasha, when Jesus is speaking, 20:23 so often He uses phrases and terms 20:25 that I have seen many times get misinterpreted, 20:31 that they'll hear something. 20:34 I think right away about when He says talking about, 20:38 you know, having a good eye and a bad eye, right? 20:41 And people take that out of context completely 20:47 and don't get the picture 20:49 because they've taken it again out of context 20:52 of that first century period of Hebraic idioms 20:55 that may have been used. 20:56 And I know that there are several, 20:58 but in that particular case, 21:02 I know that that's a rabbinic concept. 21:05 A good eye and a bad eye, right? 21:06 Exactly, exactly. 21:08 That's-- This is a strong proof, 21:11 this is a strong proof that Jesus is really working 21:17 in the familiar realm for many people. 21:21 And, you know, people heard 21:25 these teachings spoken in the synagogues, 21:28 so the teaching of Jesus is very, very similar. 21:32 It's just a fact that Jesus moves the emphasis, 21:38 moves the emphasis from the personal, you know, 21:43 focusing on human to the focusing on God 21:48 and as a giver of the Torah. 21:53 In fact, the famous conclusion of "The Sermon on the Mount" 21:58 is very misunderstood, you know, 22:01 to build a house on the rock, to build a house on the sand 22:05 and traditionally, Christian speak about, 22:08 oh, Rock is Jesus, what's the sand? 22:12 Well, if you look in the context, 22:14 Jesus is clearly speaking that the rock is the Torah. 22:19 He speaks right before this. 22:21 Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord can enter the kingdom, 22:26 but the one who follows the will of My Father. 22:32 I come back to Psalm 1, 22:34 but in the Torah of the Lord is His will. 22:38 So this is the focus of Jesus 22:41 following upon the will of the Father. 22:43 And then-- That's His climax. 22:46 You know, if you follow the will of the Father, 22:49 that's you're building the house on the rock. 22:52 If you follow just emotions, that's your sandy ground. 22:58 You're not stable. That makes much more sense. 23:02 So we come to this place where Jesus has put Himself out 23:10 in front of the Pharisees and Sadducees. 23:14 And yet the people seem to be drawn 23:19 to this real heartfelt style of teaching 23:23 that He's stripping away so much of the whitewash 23:29 that they have placed upon their teachings 23:32 and even as we spoke the parallel with Psalm 1, 23:35 He is bringing it in such a practice term to them. 23:39 Yes, some of it He speaks in parables and things 23:41 and the scriptures do say that 23:42 it was so that some people might not understand. 23:46 And the rabbis also use parables, by the way. 23:48 Exactly, exactly. 23:49 So this is-- the method is the same. 23:52 Yeah, yeah. All right, so well, wow. 23:56 The time goes by way too fast, you know. 24:01 So Rachel and I have a song today. 24:04 We are going to join together 24:05 and we are going to sing a song called "Shalom Aleichem." 24:09 Sasha, why don't you tell us about the song as we get ready? 24:12 Yeah, "Shalom Aleichem, Malachei Hasharet, 24:16 peace be on to you the ministering angels." 24:20 This is a very traditional song with which Jewish people 24:25 until today greet the beginning of the Sabbath day. 24:32 [singing in foreign language] 27:23 Amen. What a beautiful song. 27:26 Ministering angels of the Most High. 27:28 You know, I hear the song and I think how 27:32 in so many ways we are God's Malachei, 27:35 His ministering angels. 27:36 The one that He call to bring a message of hope and life 27:40 just like Yeshua brought. 27:42 So once again may the Lord bless you 27:46 and may He keep you, 27:47 and may the Lord make His face to shine upon you 27:49 and be gracious to you 27:51 and may the Lord lift His countenance upon you 27:53 and bring you His peace. 27:55 Join us once again on "Back to our Roots." |
Revised 2014-12-17