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Matthew 5:13-48
00:29:59
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into 5:13-48.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to form. Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, and we are going to continue our series on the Gospel of Matthew, our little Bible study. So we invite you to pull out your Bible so you can follow along. It'll make it much easier for you if you have your Bible in front of you, or using, of course, the Augustan Bible, which is the ESV Catholic edition, which is a wonderful translation. We like it because it tries to be as literal and close to the Hebrew and Greek original. And you can get that at Catholic Market if you want to get your Bible. But we're excited we left off last time, Michael. We covered the Beatitudes, which is just a wonderful introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. So kind of to give everybody where we're at right now, as we've been walking through Matthew's Gospel, we started the Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew, chapter five, six and seven, this great epic speech of our Lord where he really lays out fundamental teachings of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. And, of course, the Beatitudes are, in a sense, the prologue. This is where he kicks off the great Sermon on the Mount. And now that we've completed the beatitudes in verses 1 through 12 of Matthew chapter 5, we're going to move in verse 13 to the content of the sermon as he begins. And he's going to begin with two powerful metaphors, because what he's going to do is he's inviting. And these two metaphors are really a transition. It speaks basically saying if you live out the Beatitudes, you are going to be salt and light to the world. And so the idea is that if you're going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, you're a disciple called to mission. And what I love about the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling not just the 12 to mission, he's calling all who would follow him to mission. You and I, we're all called to this mission that Jesus is inviting us and summoning us into his own mission that he comes to live. And it's really remarkable when you think about it, because at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel that we talked about, we saw how the light, the magi were following the light. And the light was a sign of the birth of the Messiah, the coming of the Christ. And now Jesus is going to turn and he's going to say to the crowds, not just to the 12, but to the crowds and to you and I, you are the light of the world, a city set on a hill shouldn't be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket, but rather on a stand so that all can see that's light. And so likewise, you know, Jesus is saying we should be that light so that people can see our good works and give glory to our Father, right? And so the goal of us being light is to lead people to worship our Father in heaven. What a beautiful roadmap that Jesus gives us. But what's so striking is Jesus is the light. And now he's saying you're called to be light too. And that's extraordinary. You know, God could have come incarnate, as we talked about at the Emmanuel, and he could have done it all. But instead, Jesus comes and he's going to do a great deal, but he's going to invite you and I to share in his mission. In other words, Jesus doesn't do it all alone. He summons a people and disciples to follow him and to participate in that mission. And that mission is pretty exciting. But to be salt and light, as we're going to learn is going to be challenging. There's going to be a lot of teaching about how we live out salt and light. But Michael, let's just start with this image of salt. What would you want to say about this idea that Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth?
- [03:33]
B
You know, I love what you just said. Salvation is not a spectator sport, right? Jesus doesn't come and say, all right, guys, go sit in the bleachers, watch me, see what I do, root me on, cheer me on. I'm going to win the victory all by myself. You guys just sit out there and, you know, take, just take a break, right? No, that's not what he does. Jesus wants us to share in his mission. He comes not so that we don't have to participate in the work of redemption, but so that we can. And so we've already noticed that in the Beatitudes, what Jesus is doing is he's giving us a roadmap for how to be like him. That's what we looked at last time. The Beatitudes are ultimately Christological. They're ultimately fulfilled in Christ. He's the meek one. He is the Son of God. He is the one who's merciful. He's the one who's persecuted for righteousness sake. So Jesus told us, blessed happy are you when you are the one who mourns because you recognize that the things of this world are passing away. Then he moves out of the Beatitudes to these statements. You are salt, you are light, and you are a city on a hill. So how is it that we evangelize? How is it that we can be a light to the world? Number one, you have to start by becoming like Christ. So we always got to move everything back to Christ. We often have that desire to go out there and to shine a light, to go out there and to be a witness. But we never do that apart from Christ. We never want our story to replace the story of Christ. Our story should always be pointing people back to Christ. That's the way we're going to be. Salt and light and a city on a hill. And it strikes me when I say those three things, salt, light, and a city on a hill, that all three of these images would have been connected to the temple. And other scholars have pointed this out, right? The salt is used in the sacrifices in the temple. And so there we have a very important image of salt as a preservative, right? Salt keeps things from going bad, rotten, before we have refrigerators, but it's also used for sacrifice. And I think that imagery is connected to the next one. You are the light of the world because the light is associated with the temple. The menorah is in the temple. And then, just in case Jesus is being too subtle, you're a city set on a hill. What city? Let's see. Could there be any city that might be on a hill in Jesus Day? Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Zion, which is inseparable. And we're going to see later on, Jesus is going to say in Matthew 12, something greater than the Temple is here. And what Jesus is going to do in the Sermon on the Mount is show us in his Beatitudes how to become like him. And then going on, we see that entails temple holiness that involves a holiness that goes beyond anything that people in Jesus Day may have anticipated. It entails New Covenant righteousness. And that brings us to. To what Jesus says next in the sermon.
- [06:38]
A
Michael, I love that threefold connection to the Temple. And we're going to see more connections to the temple later on here. And so it's just so apropos. But I also love, and you've been with me to the Holy Land. We love having the Augustine Institute professors do pilgrimages to the Holy Land. And one of my favorite teachings to do there is gather on the Mount of Beatitudes and to do a teaching about Jesus teaching here. And one of the things I like to talk about is that the crowds that gather around Jesus, all these Galileans the closest villages would be Capharnaum to the east, and then to the west would be Magdala, where Mary Magdalene is from, and you have Chorazin to the north. And so if you look at these three villages that are closest and that kind of triangulate where the Mount of Beatitudes is, what you see is that what Jesus is saying here also fits from a rural perspective. So the idea of salt is important because Magdala is the fishing village, Parc Salons of the Sea of Galilee. That's where you brought your fish to be processed. And there would be pools. And we just discovered that about nine years ago when they discovered the ruins of Magdala and they found these fish pools that you can see. And that's where if you were fishing at night, you come and bring your big catch of fish. You drop them off a Magdala. They would put the fish in a pool so they would still be alive. And then during the day, the workers would process the fish, and they would process it with salt. And Josephus even mentions that the salt, the salted fish from Galilee was sold as far as the markets in Rome, right? Which is really extraordinary because now you could get fish anywhere around the Mediterranean. But what you couldn't get is a cheap, easy supply of salt. Salt was expensive. And yet right down the Jordan river valley, you. You have the Dead Sea and you have a plentiful supply of salt. And so it was very easy to get salt brought up to Galilee very close at hand. And then you had the fish there and it would be processed with the salt. And so all the workers in Magdala and all the fishermen knew how important salt was for their fishing industry, because, you know, fish go bad quickly. And by having the salt there, they could sell this fish in the marketplaces far away. And so that made their fishing business much more lucrative. And then the light, you would have olive trees up and throughout the hills. In fact, Josephus describes the region around Galilee as the Garden of Eden. It's all planted and beautiful. And we find all these olive presses in Caphernum and in Chorazin as well as Magdala. So we know that they had a lot of olive orchards by which they would. And light back then for lamps came from the olive oil, from the virgin press of the olive oil. And so all of these people who grew up in Galilee would be pressing olive oil. And so they know the importance of light, right? And that's part of their commercial industry. So salt and light are very much a part of their day to day livelihoods. And Jesus is now turning to them and saying, you are now going to be the salt. You're not just going to use salt, you're going to be the salt that I'm going to send out to the world. You are going to be the light, not just processing oil and light, but you are going to be my light that's going to burn for the world. And so Jesus is using imagery here that evokes their very livelihood, and yet he's taking them and their livelihood up to a whole different spiritual level, which is really beautiful, isn't it?
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B
Very salient. That's a very salient point. I love it.
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Anyway, I'll take that with a grain of salt.
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B
Sorry.
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So now we have this mission. They're called to be salt and light, and that's what we're called to be. And now should we move on to the verse 17?
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B
Wonderful.
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A
All right. Why don't you read this? Because a lot of people get confused by Jesus next admonition here, because he's going to take the law and transform it, but he's going to qualify before he does that, like a good teacher.
- [10:30]
B
And many people will identify this as the thesis of the Sermon on the Mount. And in fact, there are good reasons to think that this part of the sermon is going to inform really the rest of what you see in the Gospel of Matthew, sort of as a way a thesis statement for the whole Gospel. In some ways, Jesus says, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. And there, of course, is a shorthand description of the Scriptures of Israel, right? Do you not think that I've come to abolish the law and the prophets? I've come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away. Not in Iota. That's the smallest letter in the Greek Alphabet. And not a dot, right? Like you would see at the top of a letter. And in Hebrew you could also have a dot, right? Will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. So if you relax one of the least of the commandments, you'll be least in heaven. Imagine if you just ignore any of the commandments and you won't be in the kingdom of heaven, right? But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter into the kingdom of heaven. So some tight logic here. Let's first highlight that Jesus is not coming so that we rip out the Old Testament and throw it away. Right. That was a heresy that emerged in the second century of the church, Marcionism. Right. Where Marcion believed that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the God of the New Testament. This was also a heresy that was associated with the Gnostics. Right. So the idea that there isn't continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament, Jesus puts that to rest. No, that is not correct. So everything that's in the law is going to be in some way fulfilled by Jesus. It's not like he's going to come around and say, oh, you know, that was a mistake. Let's just ignore that passage. No, it's all still there. But he goes on to talk about the fact that the righteousness he's going to teach is going to involve, in a way, surpassing righteousness, Something that transcends what you find in the Old Testament. I think a key passage that underlies what's going on here is found in Jeremiah 31. In Jeremiah 31, we have the prophecy of the new covenant. And Jesus actually evokes it at the last supper when he talks about his blood related to the blood of the covenant, and he says it's poured out for the forgiveness of sins. That's from Jeremiah 31. And there in Jeremiah 31, the prophet announces a day when God will bring about a new covenant. That. That's not like the covenant that I made at Sinai with your fathers. Right. So there's a. There's something that's discontinuous with the Old Testament there, something that surpasses the Old Testament. And I think a key way to understand that is to look at Jesus teachings that follow, especially his teaching on divorce here in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19. But we can talk more about that as we move forward.
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A
Yeah, before we do that, because Jesus is going to show that he's bringing a new moment, but this new moment is not. And we're so good at this as moderns. You know, you get the latest. You know, the iPhone X, you get the. Whatever the latest version is, you get rid of the old.
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B
There's an iPhone X now.
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No, I'm just.
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B
That's six. All right. Yeah.
- [14:09]
A
So whatever version you get, you know, we just think, forget the old. And Jesus is saying, look, I'm going to bring some new things. And there's going to be some change. But don't think that this is abolishing or undermining what was given in the old. It's bringing it to its fulfillment, to its climax. This is where the law and the prophets were aiming is for what I'm doing. And so I'm not undermining the scriptures of Israel, which is we're going to see in a beautiful way now there are changes that Jesus is going to make and that Christianity will usher in. And one of those changes that I want to highlight right now, because a lot of people get, you know, wait a minute. Jesus says not one iota but or dot of the law will change until all things have passed away. Well, wait a minute. Isn't the kosher laws changed now for us Christians? We don't have to. We can eat pork, we can have bacon. I had bacon on Sunday. You know, that's a change. And so what about the smallest iota not changing until heaven and earth pass away? Well, there's an interesting idea here, and that is with Jesus's death resurrection, there is the heavens and the earth do change. In fact, in Matthew 28:11, when the soldiers guarding the tomb come back and report to the chief priests, they told them all the things that had been accomplished. Now, if you look at what Jesus says here, just in this verse, about not an iota or a dot of the law will pass away from the law until all is accomplished. And when the soldiers go back, it's in the Greek, it's the same phrase in the Greek, even though the English translations aren't consistent because none of the English, the rsv, the esv, they don't. The translators didn't catch this. So they didn't translate this rather seemingly unimportant phrase, but they didn't realize the importance of that phrase because Jesus says nothing from the law will. Will pass from the law until all is accomplished. And they go, the soldiers go and tell all that had been accomplished with the resurrection. So in other words, with Jesus death and his resurrection, the old creation, the old order, the old covenant is now accomplished. And now there's the beginning of a new creation and it's the beginning of the new heavens and the new earth that's just beginning with Jesus resurrection. And so Jesus is faithful to his word. He's not contradicting the Christians are being faithful to Jesus word. It's not until circumcision kosher laws, they cannot change during Jesus lifetime because he has to die to atone for sin and to bring the end of the old covenant. And that's why there can't be those changes during his lifetime. And he's giving you the clue to that. But then Matthew is telling you in Matthew 28:11, by all things being accomplished and that being reported to the chief priests is saying, okay, it is done. And now the old order is done away with. I don't know what you think about that, Michael.
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B
That's a really helpful take. And I think there's. It can't be a coincidence that the Greek is the same there. I would want to underscore that no dots, nothing, no iota from the law ever passes, right? We don't take anything out of the Old Testament. It's all still there. And so the point is that a key idea here is that Jesus comes to fulfill every aspect of the Torah. So, for example, we're going to see after this, in Matthew 5:21, all the way to 48, Jesus is now going to give six examples, right, where you have heard it said, but I say to you, and oftentimes what Jesus is doing is intensifying what you already found in the Torah. But not always. For example, in verses 31 and 32, he's going to talk about divorce and remarriage. And he's going to say, you know, you have heard it was said, right, that whoever divorces his wife let him give her a certificate of divorce. And we find that in Deuteronomy. But in our Bibles today, it's still there. That that prescription for divorce is still there. Why did Moses allow for divorce and remarriage? Well, in Matthew 19, Jesus is going to explain it was for your hardness of heart. See, before the book of Deuteronomy, divorce and remarriage is not permitted in the Old Testament. But what ends up happening is in the Book of Numbers. By the end of the Book of Numbers, the Israelites have continued to fall into idolatry. And what you find in the Book of Deuteronomy is a book that often gives laws that are in tension with what you found in earlier books. What God is doing is recognizing the people, as Jesus says, have hardness of heart. So that prescription that allowed for a practice that Jesus associates with adultery points to something. It points to Israel's need for salvation. It points to their need for a surpassing righteousness that they could not attain apart from God's grace in the Old Testament. And so what Jesus does in the New Testament is he fulfills every aspect. So why was kosher laws given? Well, it was given in Part to keep them from idolatry, as Thomas Aquinas and other saints explained. But we don't cut those laws out of the Old Testament because we want to recognize that these laws were given because of sin. Sin had to be dealt with. And Jesus is coming to fulfill that. He is coming to bring about the greater righteousness that we couldn't have attained in the Old Testament.
- [19:46]
A
That's exactly right. And once Jesus deals with sin, then the penance for that sin is now done away with. So the kosher laws are no longer binding. And, you know, it's interesting, both with the kosher laws, they aren't given originally. That's given after the golden calf incident, going back to that time period with that same generation that got a lot of extra laws. But then the idea of divorce, Jesus will say, as you mentioned in Matthew 19, in the beginning it was not so. And so he's going back to Genesis and to creation, to the original plan of God that didn't allow for divorce, and that divorce was added because of the hardness of hearts. But Jesus is taking us in the new covenant back to the original plan in the Garden of Eden. He's taken us back to the original law that God had written on our hearts and that he had intended for Israel and his people and for all people. So it's a beautiful thing when you understand that. So it's not a radical change. You know, there's not this. It's kind of like, I know some religions will, you know, different religions had banned something, and then all of a sudden they change their mind. And you're like, okay, so you're saying that God said, caffeine was bad, now it's okay. Or this was bad, now it's okay. This is not the case. In the biblical narrative, the laws that change are never the moral laws, but what they are is the application of the moral laws. And so Thomas Aquinas talks about, even with the certificate of divorce, it was because the hardness of their hearts, it wasn't a good law that Moses allowed because of your place. But as Thomas says, they were killing their wives to get out of their marriages. And Moses then said, give a certificate so that you had to give a dowry. So there was monetary assistance to the wife and to whatever children were being left behind. And so it was putting protection for the wives who would not just simply be abandoned without financial support. And now Jesus is saying, but we have to go back to God's original plan.
- [21:34]
B
That's right. And actually, it's interesting. This is a very Jewish idea. Some people hear this and say, wait a minute, isn't this somehow like anti Semitic? Is this. People use the phrase supersessionist. You know, you're saying the Old Testament is bad and now we replace the Old Testament. Well, wait a minute. This is a very Jewish idea, right. In Jeremiah, I'm going to give you a covenant that's not like the covenant made at Sinai, my covenant that they broke. And then it's fascinating in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are actually sections of the scrolls that talk about, here are the laws that will be given until the Messiah comes or until the eschatological age. So there's an idea that when the new age comes, the age that the prophets like Ezekiel announce, the age when God would give you his spirit to cause you to walk in his age.
- [22:18]
A
There'Ll be a change in law.
- [22:19]
B
Then there'll be a change in the law.
- [22:20]
A
And you know, that's a great point, Michael, because even the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 20, verse 25 and following talks about how with the Deuteronomic law that Moses gave, I gave them laws that were not good, by which a man does not live. In other words, they're not life giving. They're not the intention God had. They're not God's plan A, they are Moses plan B because of the situation.
- [22:42]
B
They're not bad laws of hardness. They're laws that you could not have life by.
- [22:46]
A
Right?
- [22:46]
B
Right. So they're not bad laws because they're part of God's pedagogy. Like you said, Maimonides, the rabbi pointed out that the, the reason Moses permitted divorce was because if the only way you can get out of your marriage is in death, then you're going to give some Israelites some bad ideas. Right. Talk about hardness of heart. But that points to something. It points to the need of grace. It points to the need of a coming deliverer. And so Jesus is coming not to abolish the law even when it looks like certain laws are no longer in effect. Right. In the new covenant age, as he makes clear in Matthew 19 relating to divorce and remarriage. Right. Even there he's still fulfilling the law because the laws that were given were given because of Israel's hardness of heart. Now Jesus is going to reverse that.
- [23:33]
A
That's a great point, Michael, because I think people have to understand when they hear this, like, wait a minute, so Jesus changes so you can have divorce. But come on, that's not practical. The impracticality that Moses faced is just as much alive Today. But here's the difference. Jesus ushered in a new covenant. Yes. Is marriage impossible, as the disciples say to Jesus in Matthew 19 when they hear this, they say, well, it's not expedient for a man to marry, and it's not expedient or easy. But here's the point. Jesus ushers in a new covenant and he gives grace. And if we live in that grace, we can live faithful. Marriages that don't need to end in the tragedy of divorce. But if you live apart from Christ, right? If you're out in the world today and you're living apart from Christ, well, then of course it's almost inevitable that there's going to be this common tragedy of divorce, right? But it doesn't have to be so if we live in Christ, if we're not living in Christ, then of course this is unrealistic. The only thing that makes this teaching realistic, of loving your enemies, of, you know, not looking lustfully at another person, of forgiving your enemies, and all these things are absolutely unrealistic apart from the grace and life of the God's Spirit within us.
- [24:51]
B
Amen.
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A
Right.
- [24:54]
B
This sounds so hard. This sounds so difficult.
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A
It is.
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Cheer up. It's worse than you think.
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A
It's impossible.
- [25:00]
B
Jesus says that, Right?
- [25:01]
A
Exactly.
- [25:02]
B
And so, as we move through, just briefly, because I want to make sure we talk about this in Matthew 5, Jesus then goes, after he explains how he's not come to, but to fulfill it, how your righteousness must exceed or surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees. He goes on and he talks about anger. You have heard that you shall not murder. But I'm going to tell you, right, well, I didn't murder him. I just beat him to a bloody pulp. He's alive. That's not the kind of righteousness that we're being called to, because ultimately the Beatitudes have set the standards we are to become like Christ, not just to keep these laws in a legalistic way, right? So he talks about murder. And then that's such a great passage because he says, you have already said you shall not murder. Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to his judgment. So if you're offering your gift at the altar and there you remember your brother, is something against you. Leave your gift there at the altar, go reconcile, be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. Sounds familiar. Do you know any brothers in the Old Testament who were angry and then it led to murder at the place of an altar.
- [26:06]
A
Exactly.
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B
It's Cain and Abel. Right? So. So the anger led to murder. And what Jesus is doing is he's rooting out sin literally at the heart. Right. And so it's not just enough to avoid murdering. He wants us to live the fullness of that commandment. And that goes for all the other statements that he says.
- [26:23]
A
We've all seen that in the news. If you let anger run rampant, you end up with violence.
- [26:28]
B
That's right.
- [26:29]
A
It's so important. Our Lord understands the human heart better than anybody else.
- [26:33]
B
Amen. Yeah.
- [26:34]
A
Well, you know, we only have a couple minutes left here, so I want to highlight. Of course, Jesus saves the hardest thing at the end.
- [26:41]
B
Yes.
- [26:42]
A
You know, he says, you know, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. Almost sounds like the Beatitudes. It kind of falls back into that language there, that you may be sons of your Father. Well, you know, this idea of loving enemies, I know people have said to me, well, Tim, this is just unrealistic. You know, we can't love our enemies because they'll just run over us and crush us. And, you know, but here's the point. We do have an historical example of this being lived, and that was the early Christians. You know, the early Christians, and many of whom became martyrs, loved the Romans. And when Rome started to systematically persecute women, children, as well as men, the Christians responded not by creating insurgency groups, not by creating rebellion, not by fighting back, but by praying for their enemies and peacefully suffering the persecution and forgiving their enemies. And what happens is the Romans begin to build up sympathy. Even, you know, Tacitus and others write about this, that the Romans begin to build up sympathy for the Christians. And so as the Christians are led like sheep to the slaughter, the Romans begin to have empathy. And what ends up happening is this Christian movement ends up converting pagan Rome, which is unbelievable. Who would have thought that possible? Now, if the Christians would have organized guerrilla groups and resistance groups, I don't think Rome converts. Right. Because the whole point Jesus is saying here is you are to be salt and light to the world. And that means you're to go out to the enemy and to the outsider, and you're to evangelize them. But if you fight them, if you fight back, when they treat you with hostility, you will not be able to convert them. And that is why Jesus is being absolutely pragmatic. You know, so many times we get irritated with our neighbors or we get irritated with the opposite political party, other people, and we can get angry and we can see them as enemies. But what happens is when we see somebody as an enemy, we no longer have empathy and our heart closes towards them and we only have negative feelings towards them, like anger. And what Jesus is saying is that you have to love your enemies. That doesn't mean you have to like that you're. That they're enemies, but you have to love them as people made in the imago dei, made in the image and likeness of God. And if we treat them that way, that makes all the difference in the world. And, you know, it creates the ability to have patience and love for them. And that's so important. Right? And that's what Jesus is inviting us to in the Sermon on the Mount. Next time we're going to pick up with Matthew chapter six. Read that ahead of time. I think it'll edify and prepare you for our next Bible study. But think about how you can be salt and light to your neighbors, to your co workers, to those that you don't like and those who are actually enemies, so that you can fulfill what Jesus is saying about being light and salt. And I want to thank all of you who support us in our mission circle. You enable us and empower us to be salt and light through this ministry. And I'm grateful for all your support. May God bless you.