Join us as we journey through time to the shores of ancient Israel, where we will really dice into the concept of discipleship. Joined by Pastor Ryan Brown, Selena and I uncover the profound meaning behind Jesus' invitation to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, delving into the aspirations of Jewish youth and the transformative decision to become "fishers of men." We unravel the intricate relationships between education, rabbinical authority, and societal ideals, painting a vivid picture of the first-century world that shaped the understanding of purpose and legacy.
Step into the sandals of history's most influential figures, exploring the nuanced distinctions of priests and rabbis, the rigorous paths to discipleship, and the socio-political implications of Jesus' teaching role. Pastor Ryan Brown challenges familiar portrayals of Jesus, inviting us to reexamine His image and the expectations of His contemporaries. We weave through the dialogues of Midrashic education, Jesus' lineage, and the emotional landscape of rejection and acceptance. Each chapter unveils a layer of the complex tapestry that is the heritage of faith and the personal significance of our aspirations from childhood to adulthood.
Concluding this episode, we contemplate the radical inclusivity of Jesus' call, as He chose those society deemed unworthy, gifting them honor and mission. The stories of the first disciples resonate with our own search for worth and purpose, offering an invitation to each of us to become carriers of His teachings. Today we're left inspired to recognize our value and emulate Christ's life in our own, carrying the torch of discipleship into the future.
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Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
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Join us as we journey through time to the shores of ancient Israel, where we will really dice into the concept of discipleship. Joined by Pastor Ryan Brown, Selena and I uncover the profound meaning behind Jesus' invitation to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, delving into the aspirations of Jewish youth and the transformative decision to become "fishers of men." We unravel the intricate relationships between education, rabbinical authority, and societal ideals, painting a vivid picture of the first-century world that shaped the understanding of purpose and legacy.
Step into the sandals of history's most influential figures, exploring the nuanced distinctions of priests and rabbis, the rigorous paths to discipleship, and the socio-political implications of Jesus' teaching role. Pastor Ryan Brown challenges familiar portrayals of Jesus, inviting us to reexamine His image and the expectations of His contemporaries. We weave through the dialogues of Midrashic education, Jesus' lineage, and the emotional landscape of rejection and acceptance. Each chapter unveils a layer of the complex tapestry that is the heritage of faith and the personal significance of our aspirations from childhood to adulthood.
Concluding this episode, we contemplate the radical inclusivity of Jesus' call, as He chose those society deemed unworthy, gifting them honor and mission. The stories of the first disciples resonate with our own search for worth and purpose, offering an invitation to each of us to become carriers of His teachings. Today we're left inspired to recognize our value and emulate Christ's life in our own, carrying the torch of discipleship into the future.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. Join us as we deep dive into the historic, religious, cultural, political and emotional context surrounding the real lives of real people in the Bible and the stories we've all run to life. Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. I'm your host, emma and Ward, and we are joined by my wife, selena, and our teacher, pastor Ryan Brown. Hello everyone. So we spent the last 40 minutes already catching up, so we don't have any pick-up things to talk about here, necessarily. But in that 40 minutes I know Ryan told me what we were going to talk about, but I actually definitely didn't ask him again. So what are we going to hit this week? So?
Speaker 3:we're going to talk about the calling of Jesus' disciples in a broader sense, Really kind of anchored more on what Jesus calls Peter and Andrew, James and John and we'll have Selena read it here in a second, but it's like what it means to be called is what we're folks know.
Speaker 3:Yes, so on the forefront, right when Jesus comes to his disciples and he says you know, come and follow me. Right On the front, we obviously know what that means. Like okay, and we take that a certain way. Like okay, we need to go and follow Jesus. And in the general sense that is correct, right. So don't think that if you read it that way, you know previously that you've completely been off base on that.
Speaker 3:But there's a lot more loaded to that statement that we miss and there's a lot of beauty that kind of underlays that one statement alone and it's going to. We're going to dive, like historically, within the context of what is it like for a Jewish boy growing up in Israel and what? Or a Jewish boy, what is the supreme ideal? Like you know, I asked my. You know you always ask your children, especially when they're little, like what do you want to be when you grow up? Right, and it's really interesting. Boys are always kind of the same I want to be police officer, I want to be a firefighter, I want to be an astronaut, like.
Speaker 1:I think I want to be a pilot. No, not. I think I know I actually dressed up as a pilot, got a whole uniform.
Speaker 3:So an astronaut right, same kind of idea Like you kind of get the same sense, right. Yeah, my daughter, you know she was more. I want to be a teacher, I want to be a nurse, right?
Speaker 1:What do you want to be, Selena, when you grew up?
Speaker 4:I don't know. I usually say I want to be you when I grow up.
Speaker 1:You want to be what I want to be you, you want to be me, when people ask you what you want to be when you grow up.
Speaker 4:No, I just realized I comment like man. I want to be you when I grow up.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. What am I? What does?
Speaker 3:that mean, I just want to be me when I grow up. Who else can I other be, you know, other than me, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, all right, selena, I appreciate that. I guess that was, I think, a compliment. I think it was a compliment If it wasn't.
Speaker 3:We're just going to move on because we can't have a mineral counseling.
Speaker 1:Oh, we can always pause, but no, so An hour back.
Speaker 3:But the point is is, like you know, you ask little boys now kind of like what's their ideal right? What's the ideal of what you would want to be when you grow up and Jewish boys were no different right.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I thought you were going to say like kids today say something different than that.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I'm talking about Jewish boys in the first century. Oh okay, there was no different. They had that ideal of what they wanted to be, but it was different in terms of what they were wanting. So what I want to do first, before we really dive into all of that, is just have Selena actually read to begin with, so we have a context of what we're talking about to kind of help set us up here Before we jump in.
Speaker 1:I do want to give like a one sentence like actual welcome. So happy to be back in this new episode. If this is your first time here, this is a deep Bible study podcast. So kind of the expectation is you're you have a basic understanding of the faith and now you're looking for that deep nuance, look at the Bible, and so that's what we're going to be looking into as we go into this study. Sermon notes, or notes for the Bible study, are on the church website and all the links that you need to be able to get all that information can be found in the description. So I hope you enjoy this discussion with us as we jump into what it means to be called.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and because it's a podcast, you can always pause and take notes and re-listen and rewind Absolutely, and that's one of the great things about it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we're reading from Matthew, chapter four, versus 18 to 22. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, where they were fishermen. Come follow me, jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. And once they left their nets and followed him, going on from there, he saw two other brothers, james, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Speaker 1:All right, Before we keep going. Where was that? Did you read from?
Speaker 4:This is Matthew chapter four, versus 18 to 22. And today I read from the NIV version so, matthew four, yeah, all right, I'm here.
Speaker 3:Okay, so one of the things about these kind of stories. You know, I've been in ministry for a bit and I've learned a lot. I certainly haven't learned everything, but I've kind of narrowed it down to this Ready. So there are two types of people in the world, those who like musicals and those who hate them. Oh my gosh, and those two people generally marry each other.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it's true.
Speaker 3:I wasn't ready for that. Okay, so you can learn so much about somebody by asking them that question Do you like musicals? Because I do and Selena does not, right.
Speaker 1:So what's funny about?
Speaker 3:it is that, like you find, like people who like musicals, it's like they almost it's just like a microcosm or an extension of the way they kind of view life and scripture and all that as a whole. Right, it's interesting they're chasing the musical of life, right, Like we want. And I guess I would say this for the people who don't like musicals that the very thing that makes somebody who likes a musical like it is the same thing that makes a person who doesn't like musicals not like it. Okay.
Speaker 3:So, like I am somebody who does not like musicals, and the reason why is because that's not reality.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 3:That's not life, that that is not. You're telling me the birds don't burst into song with me as I sing what I am saying is that I've never once in the history of my entire existence on this planet which admittedly is pretty short in the whole context of humanity, but I've never seen somebody in a casual conversation talking about some life problem or boy or girl problem. Just all of a sudden, break out into song and a choreographed dance in public where everybody is like, yeah, this is completely normal.
Speaker 1:You know it makes me cringe it just.
Speaker 3:it bothers me because it's like have you ever been in band?
Speaker 1:No, I've been in a band but not like band like high school band, high school band, high school jazz band. These were things that happened.
Speaker 3:Okay, maybe I'm just saying my experience. I'm like that's not reality, right, yeah, and so the thing that people who like musicals like about it is because it's that way, right, and that's what they kind of look for, even when it comes to, like, studying the Bible. It's like they're looking for the musical experience, for it to break out and sound and dance, artistic interpretation of real pain and real emotion. But it's not real Pain is real enough for me. I don't need it to be Artistically interpreted Artistically interpreted.
Speaker 4:You mean you don't want to sing about your pain, right?
Speaker 3:And people who don't like musicals.
Speaker 1:it's like my life in two pieces, because that is not, it is not.
Speaker 3:I'm not saying music, I'm saying musicals. Okay yeah, sound of music. High school musical. High school musical. What's the show they had? Yeah, high school musical, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just brought the show.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you had that generation that kind of grew up with that, Like I didn't.
Speaker 4:I did enjoy Hamilton, though.
Speaker 1:All of the Renaissance Disney movies of the 90s.
Speaker 3:So the Disney movies are different because they're a cartoon, so you're already going into it with. This is Imagination. Yeah, this is not reality. Right Interesting, but like you, my wife's favorite movie is Greece, right, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at, I'm like what, what?
Speaker 3:This is not how people act right how biker gangs act. So my point is this by larger extensions, sometimes when I read Sort of the narratives in the Bible.
Speaker 3:It's like I'm tracking along the narrative. It's not that I'm losing the narrative, but what I read in terms of details and way people react and respond, I'm like that doesn't seem to be reality, like people don't respond that way. You know what I mean In this particular story. Right Is when I had felt with for a while. Is that okay? So there's this stranger walking along the shoreline.
Speaker 4:Interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm fishing, I'm working, and this person says hey, particularly with, like Peter, I mean Peter's married right. And with his brother Andrew. They obviously have a business. They're trying to make ends meet, yeah, obligations. And then he says some stranger comes along and says, hey, come, follow me and I'll make you a fisher of men. And they're like okay. And then you just drop everything they're doing and go.
Speaker 1:You go to John and James they're with their father, right?
Speaker 3:Imagine ever doing this to your father growing up where you're working the boat, you're doing a chore, and some stranger again comes and says, hey, come, follow me. And they're like, okay, immediately, and then like there's no repercussions, like imagine if I came back from the gym and I looked at my wife and I said, hey, I met this guy in the gym and he told me to come follow him and I'll be able to lift the world, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll be able to bench press the earth.
Speaker 3:I'm packing up and I'm leaving for a couple of months to go follow this guy. My wife would be like let's start my training no you're packing your things to either go to an insane asylum, or you're packing your things to go find a different apartment, or you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Like you're not staying here. That's what do you think you're doing, right? Yeah, but apparently this you know, peter and Andrew and James and John, like that doesn't seem to be the case and I always just kind of had this disconnect of the reality, right? Why, like? How does this make sense? You know what I'm saying? It's like reading a musical and musical. Loving people read that.
Speaker 1:No problem with it, cause they're like yeah, this is that's a musical. Oh my.
Speaker 3:God, it's an example of a musical where people who don't like musicals read that and like we you're right, it gives like pitch perfect vibes, right Musical people it's about it. Does it feel right when I think non-musical loving people? It's like does it make sense, like logically right, and just kind of where people's minds go right and how they are.
Speaker 3:So this is kind of that text. But what we're going to do is we're going to kind of dive in a lot of the context that we to into this so that by the end for the non-musical loving people who listen, they're going to be like, oh okay, that makes sense, right. For the musical loving people they're going to be like, yep, that absolutely feels completely right. So with that, let's kind of get into it. So I like that.
Speaker 4:I like that. I can't wait for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So for those that are listening now, go ahead and write a comment on if you're a musical lover or a musical hater, and how this podcast episode made you react. I'm interested.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a, so let's kind of talk about so the ideal for a Jewish boy in the first century AD. Okay, so, just as my son, both my sons actually wanted to be firemen and astronauts, and now it's scientists. They want to be scientists. That's something you mature into, though they eventually want to get there. My youngest is still kind of I want to be an astronaut. I kind of want to be a scientist.
Speaker 3:I'm like, well, an astronaut is a scientist but it's also a pilot, so that's why it's so cool, right? Like? Besides the point, what was their ideal? Okay, so, a Jewish boy in the first century, their supreme ideal that they wanted to grow up to be was a rabbi. That was the top tier, that was the most respected thing that you can be in that society as a rabbi. Much in the Middle East is the same way to be a religious leader. I can have gas in Iraq.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the same thing, but that's equated to with real power too. It's like political influence and power are very much tied to religious influence and power. Well, that would be the same for their time too, is that?
Speaker 3:if you were a rabbi, particularly a predominant, well-known rabbi, one to which you're part of the Sanhedrin, that's giving you political power as well.
Speaker 1:It's like those kids that say I want to be president.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's kind of the same, but they're kind of meshed together, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because in those societies.
Speaker 3:It is meshed together, right. So like, for example, the high priest of Israel because they were under Roman occupation, almost acted as the senior political leader for Israel within that occupation.
Speaker 1:Okay, right so but for everybody were they, the ones who organized, like the Jewish exception and all that that we talked about in prior episodes.
Speaker 3:They would be the ones who are essentially lobbying on the half of the Roman prefix. Who are in charge? It depends on the kingdom, Because, remember, in Jesus's day, northern Galilee was actually there, was a king. It was the kingdom of Galilee, with that particular time, King Herod of Antioch, the son of King Herod the Great, and Judah, the kingdom of Judah. There was another king, but right before, like essentially before Jesus was born, this dude was a maniac psycho, was not effective.
Speaker 3:So Rome came in and said we're going to put a Roman governor over that kingdom. So you gotta remember, when it keeps talking about Israel that's actually in the context of the time when they're writing the Gospels is actually a very powerful political statement, because at the time there wasn't a united Israel, right, it was two different kingdoms. So using the term Israel is meshing two kingdoms together. Talking about sovereignty, right, that's a whole different thing. But the primary thing was to be a rabbi. Now, from the ages of six years old to 10, all Jewish boys would go to, essentially, synagogue and they would go to what you'd call the school of the book, school of the book or the school of Torah, and what they would learn there and this blows of many of our Western minds what was sorry, what were the ages that they were going to the school Six?
Speaker 3:years old to 10. Six to 10. So, from six to 10, you're going to the school of Torah, school of the book, and in that time, because most people couldn't read or write, there was no printing press yet. Some Jewish families maybe had a scroll of, maybe a book of the Old Testament in their home, but generally nobody had that right. So the big emphasis was on what you'd call the oral tradition, and what they would do is they would memorize the entire Torah in memory, verse by verse, the entire Torah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they read it throughout the year. They would read a couple verses from it, and so by the end of the year they read the whole thing, right From the ages of six years old to 10 years old yeah, so by the time.
Speaker 3:But even at synagogue they would be reading it, right, Sure, but for this particular school, like B Cendar, kids at school every day when they did everything else, they were just learning Torah but they're memorizing it, so it was from start of Genesis 1-1, all the way through at the end of the Deuteronomy verse by verse, going through the entire Torah. It was all ingrained in memory, so a 10-year-old right coming out of that school would be able to recite the entire Torah, start to finish right.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense from the perspective of a lot of the stories in the New Testament where people seem to recognize the references that Jesus would be making. Average people recognize these references whereas, like most of us today, wouldn't recognize them without deep study into. It's like how does this average person know that he's quoting Isaiah? It's like, well, because they went to these schools and everyone had it.
Speaker 3:Isaiah is not.
Speaker 1:Torah. Oh, you're right, isaiah is not Torah. We'll get to it, okay, because they were building blocks in their society, okay.
Speaker 3:So, from six years old to 10 years old. By the time you graduate the school of the book at 10 years old, you had memorized Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Numbers, right, the five books, the books of Moses, the Torah, and it was just memory. It was. This is what it says, because that was the foundation. You just need to understand what God said as the law is what you need to do, right? So, coming out of the school of the book at 10 years old, if you were one of the top students, like the rabbis who are there observing, would say, yeah, Imran has a brain for this. He did really well, Like he had this all memorized by the time he was eight. You know what?
Speaker 3:I mean when you're like all, you're the best of the best within your class. You would then get selected to continue studies into what they would call the school of Talmud. Now, the school of Talmud is when you go now, memorize all the history books, so First Kings, second Kings, first Annual, second Samuel, first Chronicles, second Chronicles, the prophets, so all your major and minor prophet books and your books of wisdom. So that's like Ecclesiastes. You know all the books of Solomon, proverbs, psalms, etc. Right, so it's essentially memorizing the rest of the Old Testament. If you were selected and you're shown you're proved yourself to be a good student, right, interesting. So that would go from the time that you were about 10 to 13. Now, at 13, you would have a Bar Mitzvah. This is with the, essentially, you are graduating, you know, from the school of Talmud and you're becoming a man. Now, if you didn't graduate, weren't going to the school of Talmud you would still have a Bar Mitzvah.
Speaker 3:But if you were in the school of Talmud, that Bar Mitzvah took place in the temple or with a prominent rabbi, if you couldn't make it there. So if you think about when, the story of when Jesus' parents left him at the temple, well, notice how it was saying that he was. Well, he was being questioned and answering and they were amazed by his answers Jesus. That is the reason they're there is for his Bar Mitzvah. He's becoming a man in their culture. But what that tells you is that at that time, jesus was in the school, was graduating the school of Talmud.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I guess my question is why were his parents then like confused as to where he was?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but okay, because it was dangerous to walk the trails from, like they're coming up from Galilee right in the north, going down into Jerusalem. You had robbers, you had there's danger, right? Yeah, so the way they would move into caravan is with a group of people. You'd have children and women in the middle, and then the men would pretty much walk on the flanks and in the front. Okay, okay. So Jesus on his way to his Bar Mitzvah would have been riding with his mother in the middle of the caravan, with the children and the women. After his Bar Mitzvah, he's now considered a man, right? So mama was probably like well, he's not with me because he's a man. Now that's Bar Mitzvah. He's probably with dad somewhere, walking on the flanks with the men.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense. Dad was probably like well, yeah, he just had his Bar Mitzvah, but he's still 13. Like there's some practicality of that right. He's still probably just with his mother in the caravan. It was still close enough. You know what I mean. We were not like all right, you're 13. Here's your spear, here's your sword. Go join the military, right? Yeah, it wasn't like that, so that's why that confusion happened.
Speaker 3:It was that mama was like yeah, he's probably on the flanks with dad. Dad's like no, he's still with the primary caravan with mama. Does that make sense? And then they were like three. That's why it says they get down there like where is he?
Speaker 3:He's still at the temple, right, oh my gosh. Okay, so I say that because that what that tells you is that because of where Jesus was in the interaction of that, at his age you knew that he was graduating the School of Talmud. Okay, and notice how it also stated that they were amazed by his answers in that text. Yeah, that's important because after the School of Talmud so you remember you already kind of skimmed off the top. You know probably 25% of top performers at the School of Torah. Okay, To go to the School of Talmud. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You're in the School of Talmud, you're graduating. They then skim off the top again the top you know 2015% of high performing students from that to go into the next school, which is the School of Midrash. Okay.
Speaker 1:So so your, your level of education was totally based on your ability to do your first level of education. Keep going up, yeah Right. So it's like if you were good here, then you keep going up. If you weren't good, it's like well off to the fields there. Well, it gets even worse than that.
Speaker 3:So we'll talk about that in a second. So just track with me for a bit, okay. But I guess what I'm saying is one of the central pieces, that when you see Jesus in the temple interacting with the rabbis and the priest, and how they're amazed with them.
Speaker 3:that's the author giving credence to Jesus' intellectual acumen for Torah. It is making a rabbinical statement about him. Is that because they were so amazed? There's an assumption that because they were so amazed that he was going to move on to the school of Midrash. Okay Now, the school of Midrash is from about the ages of 13 to 15 or 16, kind of depending. But the school of Midrash is you again oral tradition, by memory, memorizing the commentaries of essentially the entire Old Testament and the Torah. So it's no longer by memory. The first five books is the entire Old Testament. I've memorized in my head. But now I've also memorized, by the time that you're graduating, that you've memorized all the commentaries of all the different rabbis throughout the years. Wow, and their commentary on that entire thing. Just think about this. You could also say that most 10 year olds in that culture probably knew more Torah than most pastors do now. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and by the time you are about 15 years old in the school of Midrash. That's like equivalent to saying that level is essentially a master's of divinity, what we call a master's of divinity now. But even now I couldn't quote to you. I have notes, I have general, I can remember Generally the theology of Carl Barth and Tom Sequinus and John Calvin and Martin Luther and Augustine. I could tell you generally right, but I can't quote to you Specifically.
Speaker 3:What Augustine says as a commentary on Genesis 3.5. Yeah, right, that's like the kind of depth that they were at, right, and of course they're in a culture where that's a natural thing to in terms of memories, that they had, mnemonics and obviously ways to teach this well, that we're not used to. So that's what I'm saying. It blows our mind, right, yeah, but by the time you're about 15 or 16 years old, you're If you were selected for all these schools, right? So if you make it to the school of Midrash, which is the Bible makes a point that Jesus did, or assumes that because of the response of the priests and the rabbis, at his bar mitzvah, he was most likely selected for Midrash.
Speaker 3:Okay, now at the end of Midrash you have again there's a skimming, but it's not the way. The other previous schools have been kind of skimmed. What happens is all the students in Midrash, the rabbis come down and they interview each student and the interviews were kind of crazy. Like this is going to sound complicated and that's because it was. Okay.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to just kind of give you a couple of examples. Okay, one of the things that were implicit with it was that they would ask you a question about scripture or commentary or whatever, and you needed to respond to any question. So, as an example, if I were to ask you, emron, what's two plus two, four, you would say four. Right yeah, they would be expected to respond what's two plus two. Well, what's the square root of 16? Oh man.
Speaker 1:Four, yeah, that's. The answer is four, yeah, you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that's how they would. That's how you need to respond.
Speaker 1:You respond with a question, so that's why, when you see a lot of the teachings of Jesus or interactions. They can do the jeopardy like what is four?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I feel like that'd be kind of cheating the well, you probably just want to get selected, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1:You're right, I'm talking to a point.
Speaker 3:When you see Jesus use like you, when you see a lot of his interactions with people, they come and ask him a question. You'll often find Jesus responds with a question.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's. That's what he probably learned in Midrash school. Like that's what you were trained to do, like that right you were you respond with a question. That's how rabbis would respond to questions, because they've gone through all that Does that make sense. That's one. They would also ask you kind of trick questions. So an example what are the three references to the book of Deuteronomy in the prophet Obadiah's book?
Speaker 1:Okay, so when you're expected to know that okay, but that's a trick question.
Speaker 3:It's not really a trick question, but it is kind of a trick question because what you would respond, the expected response to that, would be well, which three references are you referring to? Cause, there's actually four references to Deuteronomy and Obadiah, oh wow. You see what I'm saying Like he's testing, does he know that there's four? Or is he only? Just going to give me three. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So it's testing their their act for this yeah.
Speaker 3:I failed that SAT test and most did. Right Now, this is what we're leading to. Okay, this is this is going to be what makes what Jesus says here so impactful. Okay, in that interview, with a bunch of different rabbis getting interviewed and the the perspective disciple, the student would go find a rabbi, cause the next step of this, after you graduate mid rush school is to go find a rabbi to be their disciple that you go study under you learn a mean student. I'm going to go essentially be an apprentice under you and you're going to teach me.
Speaker 3:So you would go to these rabbis and like, well, you know, can I be your disciple? And they get. They get this, have this interview process, right? If they found you unworthy, we'll get to that. We'll get to that in a second. What's first actually talked about? If you were accepted? This is what they would say. If you were accepted, okay, and this is well documented, this is pretty standard phrase, right? If you were accepted, they would say come follow me and spread my yoke. Okay.
Speaker 3:So that was a very common the yoke. What they meant by yoke is that that's like the doctrine, the teachings, the position of that rabbi. Yeah. So the rabbi's goal was to spread his yoke, to spread his theology, to spread his teachings. Right, the disciple were to come in and learn from him, and with the understanding that you are here to spread my yoke, okay. So I want you to kind of remember that, because I have a question, though.
Speaker 1:Why? Why was why? Did each rabbi have a different yoke, I guess, slightly different interpretation? Once you reached that level of nuance with the faith and they're like, why want to spread my interpretation of it? Like, why? Why was that accepted within the culture? There wasn't like a. This is the. It sounds like denominations within.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it could be a little bit of fractionalism, if you remember, not fraction, faction, faction. If you remember when we were doing the Galatians, study right how Paul warns against factions. Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff he's talking about, but I mean, I would also say, though, even in today's Christianity, you have a bunch of different theological systems and camps, and you have people who are almost champions for them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Like you, there's no shorter podcast that you can go find. Talking about by Calvinism is the proper theological system, and then another podcast that says why the Calvinism is not the appropriate theological system.
Speaker 3:You still see the same thing, as long as you're remaining united under the same Lord. For us, right? Yeah, so you still get a little bit of that, and then that debate's good, because one of the things I think that's assumed behind all this is one disciple means student, so I'm here to learn, right, I'm here to learn from my rabbi. I am a disciple, I'm a student of this rabbi.
Speaker 1:And does rabbi mean teacher?
Speaker 3:I mean more or less. Yeah, I mean it was obviously eluded.
Speaker 1:Political stuff Right, but yes, and it's basic essence.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's your teacher, it's your religious teacher.
Speaker 1:Right, okay.
Speaker 3:But I think so. One of the pieces with that, though, is you would choose that rabbi, and what he is seeing is essentially are you good enough, are you worthy enough to be my disciple, represent me and spread my yoke across, you know, when you go on to your ministry. Essentially, right, that's what they were concerned with. So I want to. This is Matthew, chapter 11, verse 28 to 30. So I want you to kind of keep this in mind, right, remember, they would say come, follow me and spread my yoke. Okay, here's an example of Jesus using kind of the same term. This is in verse 28, chapter 11, and he says come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I am a gentle and humble and heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Okay, so you notice how these are where you find that the devian sees devian sees as proud.
Speaker 3:I mean deviations, deviations, thank you, not deviants, yeah.
Speaker 1:The deviation of Christ.
Speaker 3:Okay when you would say come follow me, spread my yoke, what he instead says come follow me. Then he says I will give you Right. There's all these, there's this emphasis of what he will give in the relationship. Previously, your relationship between a rabbi and a disciple wasn't that way. Essentially, what's in it for the disciple, the disciple. What's in it for the disciples they get to be my student.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're accepted to be my student, the fact that you're here Right, that you get to come study and my presence, is my presence Essentially right, what he emphasizes instead of so when he says come follow me and spread my yoke. He says come follow me, it's to your benefit, you'll find rest with me, tired souls will find rest with me. But then he goes into the yoke portion, right. So he's following the same model, right. But he says take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Take my yoke, take my, my doctrine, take my teachings, take my theology and learn from me. I am gentle and humble and heart and you will find rest for your souls in his yoke. Right, for my yoke, my teachings, my doctrine, my theology is easy and my burden for it is light. Okay, so you see Jesus following that kind of that same model, right, how he's calling out to them. It's a rabbinical saying.
Speaker 3:It is a very Jewish rabbinical saying that he's giving in that moment. So the whole like goal right For this rabbi interviewing a student to come be a potential disciple is they're looking at. Is this individual good enough to be my disciple or do they have the ability to be essentially like the?
Speaker 1:rabbi. I have a question Was Jesus actually? I don't know if it's an ordination process, but Jesus, was Jesus like an actual rabbi by the state at this point?
Speaker 3:I thought you were going to ask this question because I taught this to the youth a couple of weeks ago and they didn't pick up on this and they didn't ask this question, but I did when I was doing my study. So right, what's the quick, good question? Right, if Jesus was a recognized rabbi, which he was so.
Speaker 1:He was a recognized rabbi by this point. So when he walked up on these men fishing, they would have like was he wearing something that would have made it known.
Speaker 3:It would have been known. I am a rabbi. That guy's a pick up on some of the context behind the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of this, it was just some dude, some stranger walking on the shore, A political this is a rabbi leader Essentially in your community that you would have been aware of. That you may have, they may have in some way like seen him in some of the school process before they fell off this is happening in Capernaum.
Speaker 3:Jesus was from Nazareth.
Speaker 1:Oh, but they would have known him.
Speaker 3:I don't think they would have known, necessarily known him. I don't think they would have known that he was necessarily supposed to be the king of Israel. Yet, right Cause there's two elements kind of playing behind this.
Speaker 1:But they knew he was a rabbi, he would have been dressed in that way. Very, very obvious. It's been recognizable that he was a rabbi, very very obvious. And the other question is also kind of assumes he was alone. Would he even have been alone?
Speaker 3:Well, this is kind of talking about you. I think he would have had a couple of disciples by this point, just based off the fact of he was spending time down by the Jordan with John the Baptist.
Speaker 1:We'll get all of that in a second. I'm sorry, okay.
Speaker 3:But you do raise up an interesting thing, right? So if Jesus went to the and I was going to say this that Luke makes the point to talk about when Jesus's ministry started at 30 years old, right? Why does that matter? Because 30 was the age that you would start your ministry as a rabbi.
Speaker 1:It would take 10 more years for their school to be completely complete.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so essentially what would happen is because so the whole idea of the intermittent rabbi like Jesus was that wasn't unique to Jesus. Most rabbis were traveling like he did. So when you see him moving around everywhere, traveling and preaching the gospel, I mean he's preaching his yoke, right, he's spreading his yoke, just like other rabbis were traveling around spreading their yoke, their teachings, right. So when it makes a point that it started when he was 30, that again is a rabbinical statement that makes the jealousy that some of those competing factions of the society.
Speaker 1:You're the new kid on the block. Yeah, it makes a lot more interesting, right.
Speaker 3:So, when Jesus goes up and starts teaching in the temple for example, one that also is a play that you in order for you to teach in the temple, you also had to be from the line of Aaron.
Speaker 3:So you know that's story, like we did it when the adulterous woman, right. But then there's also the story when he's in their teaching. He's flipping tables because of the money changers. How is he in there teaching other rabbis and priests in the temple? To begin with, you weren't allowed to do that unless you were from the line of Aaron. So why does that matter? Because Luke and Matthew follow two different genealogies. One goes through Joseph, which is to show royalty, right. The other goes through Mary and everyone's like oh, that's him trying to trace the bloodline right by blood, because he came through Mary. He wasn't a blood child of Joseph.
Speaker 3:He was the only blood he shared with anybody was Mary. I don't think that's the right answer. I think what he's really showing is his rabbinical line to Aaron, because, aaron being the brother of Moses, right the Levites, he was over the charge of the temple. So in order for you to teach in the temple, you had to be of the line of Aaron, and that would be verified before you even entered the temple to teach. So, they would have had to verify Jesus's lineage back to Aaron, that's absolutely wild, right.
Speaker 1:So that level of nuance.
Speaker 3:But but yeah. So then he shows up, he's the new kid on the block. Okay, yeah, you can teach here, because you're of the line.
Speaker 1:We suck at tracking stuff now, like the level of accuracy that they had to track. That stuff is incredible, right. How they still did it, and that's why you see it in the scriptures Like I don't know how to go back 15 generations of in my family.
Speaker 3:I barely go back three, when Rome destroyed the temple and 70 AD. That's why that was such a big deal, because all those records were kept in the temple. So, the fact that, because the gospel of Matthew in particular, is in the context of that, so the fact that he records Jesus's genealogy was for the, because the temple had been destroyed. Those records were lost.
Speaker 3:He says we need to record this, so they understand future generations, understand his lineage back to not only Aaron but also Aaron, but also of David to prove that he's a Messiah, because that was part of the messianic proof. Right, and I get a question from modern day. Non believing Jew is okay, say Jesus wasn't a Messiah. You're waiting. So waiting for the Messiah.
Speaker 1:How are?
Speaker 3:you going to verify he's a Messiah, because all the proof that the Bible gives you for the Messiah has been destroyed. You know what I'm saying. So, like that's a whole other element. But my point being is that, or the other question to this was then who would have been Jesus's rabbi? Because if he goes from the school of the book to the school of Talmud, to the school of Midrash, for him to be made a rabbi, he would have had to have been a disciple of somebody.
Speaker 3:You see what I'm saying. Like very quickly, I'll just give you three options. There's one that I kind of lean towards. Okay, one there also could have just been an unnamed rabbi that we just don't know wasn't documented. It didn't matter who his rabbi was, because Jesus was the ultimate the rabbi, so it didn't really matter. So they don't bother to mention his name. That's one option. Second option would be John the Baptist, because, if you remember, john the Baptist was a rabbi who was also a priestly rabbi because he was of his father.
Speaker 3:Zachariah was one of the priests the day of Atonement, that's when, all right, he had his following of disciples with him and by the Jordan. How much older was John the Baptist? Six months. Yeah, you're talking about John the Baptist collecting all of those followers within about six months ahead of Jesus. Wow. Like, not a lot of time.
Speaker 4:Then that doesn't really bring in that case for John the Baptist, exactly.
Speaker 3:That's exactly it. Yeah, right so. But some of the counter arguments to that would be well, why was Jesus down in the Jordan to begin with? You know, john knew he was like, yeah, they were cousins, yeah, they had Thanksgiving turkey together growing up.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanksgiving, then. But you know what I'm saying, right, yeah, but they had plenty of these. They would have known each other, right? But John had all his disciples too right? The third, which is the one that I tend to lean towards, that I can be swayed on, but I think it was his father, joseph. Really.
Speaker 3:I think his father, Joseph was the, ended up being his rabbi. His father was a stone maser. So here's the thing with that. That's true, but because the rabbis were intermittent teachers and they would travel, they would still have to work.
Speaker 1:They would still have to work Jesus also worked Right.
Speaker 3:So most rabbis had a trade, was like woodworker or something Mason, it's masonry, carpentry, masonry one of the two most likely masonry, even though everybody associated to wood but um, like Jesus, probably grew up even in certain like areas along Galilee. Yeah. Like you will see a lot of. There was a big economic boom there in Rome, where they were building a lot of things, a lot of Gentile towns.
Speaker 1:This is fascinating too, because it really kind of brings in the tithing portion as well, because if you didn't have disciples to help fund your ministry, then now you're a rabbi that's trying to go out and spread your yoke but also have. You have to work, and so until you have the disciples that are willing to help fund your ministry, you're out here working to just eat and stuff like that and then also trying to teach.
Speaker 3:So it's actually and that's why Paul talks about, like in Galatians 6, that you need to pay these teachers, the rabbis, what you want, because if you're not going to be able to financially support them, they have to work their trade to make ends meet to be able to feed themselves.
Speaker 1:And then they can't focus on studying the Word so that they can teach you. So if you want to be taught, then you should be and spreading the hope right.
Speaker 3:So, and that's why I, said Jesus had a.
Speaker 3:So generally in this time, like with the men in particular. So if this is the supreme ideal, right? What happens then? If somebody like Peter who's married, who's a becoming a disciple, or the rabbi themselves are married, or you know how does that work Generally? What would happen? Because that was the supreme ideal? Men would go commit themselves to study. Women would actually run the and do the management of the business. They controlled the money. They controlled, like, the day-to-day operations. Everyone's like oh, the day-to-day operations are the home, that's true, but also the day-to-day operations of the business. So the men could go commit themselves to study, to be their ally right.
Speaker 3:So the whole point is that, yes, jesus was. Jesus knew the trade of masonry or carpentry to probably sustain himself for a bit. But I don't make any mistake about it, because I think this is a misnomer when you ask what was Jesus's occupation. It was not a carpenter, it was a rabbi. There's only two references to Jesus being a carpenter or a mason in Scripture. One of them is actually in reference to his father. Isn't this the carpenter's son? The other one is when he's in Nazareth. They're like isn't this the carpenter? But that's also within the context of people not knowing anything about Jesus right, but you were bringing up, but over 54 times, hold on over 54 times.
Speaker 3:it calls Jesus' teacher a rabbi. Jesus' occupation was a rabbi. That's who he was.
Speaker 1:That's what he was known as he was a rabbi, but you were referencing that Joseph may have also been a rabbi, so gone through all these schools.
Speaker 3:He was probably the rabbi to Jesus.
Speaker 1:That's why we also see what's really the proof text you're pulling from to make that argument that Joseph was also a rabbi?
Speaker 3:It's more, I guess, inferred, particularly because we don't know a whole lot about Joseph, to be honest. Yeah, I know. In the very beginning, the way he handled Mary in that whole piece. Because, mary, being of the line of Aaron, they generally, if you weren't going to marry within the tribe, the Levitical tribe, from that lineage it had to be some sort of spiritual lineage back to it, so a rabbi or somebody like that.
Speaker 3:So when? But probably in terms of the course of events, joseph probably just finished his apprenticeship, as with the rabbi, and then after that point, because there's that wall right, there's about a decade before you can start being a practicing rabbi. So you're still kind of, you're still a I guess you would say, an associate pastor. In a sense You're still doing ministry but you don't have yoke yet.
Speaker 1:You don't get to spread your yoke. That's for a long time, right.
Speaker 3:That's why, when Jesus is in Nazareth and he makes that big claim in the synagogue, when he opens up to Isaiah 61, he says on this day it's been fulfilled, and there's this big uproar and they tried to kill him, right, well, why was he? If they're reading the prophets anyways, that's because he was already had been identified, before he started his active rabbinical ministry, as being probably somebody who had already passed apprenticeship and he was active in the synagogue in that role until that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. But to their they're like well, yeah, isn't this our homegrown rabbi from Nazareth? And he's telling us you know what I'm saying. So that's a lot of the context of that.
Speaker 3:But you see these all throughout, right, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on Joseph, because, but Jesus certainly probably had a rabbi, because he had to be accepted culturally as somebody who has a rabbi. Yeah, right, and not only that, but you also see a lot of Jesus in his oral tradition. So there's the written law, then there's the oral law. Right, jesus held pretty tight. It's called halakha. He held pretty tight to oral law too. You get that in things like there's small subtleties, right, that we miss. But when he, for example, when he blesses the food before he eats that's oral law.
Speaker 3:That's not written law. That's not Leviticus. What Leviticus actually says is that you're supposed to bless God and give him thanks after you eat.
Speaker 1:Oh, what you say.
Speaker 3:You're essentially supposed to bless God and say thank you for giving me a full belly. Thank you for providing for me. Right, that's written law, oral law. Had it that you pray before your meal? Oh, interesting, and you see Jesus doing that, right? So there's these small subtleties like that that show him that he is following rabbinical oral law. So he's not deviating. He's not as rogue as I think we tend to think he may be in terms of.
Speaker 1:The Pharisees make him seem like he's pretty rogue.
Speaker 3:They do because there are certain, Like I said, there are times where you see him diverting them. But the big context for us in this passage, though, is that, to the point that you already brought up right, jesus would have been recognized as a rabbi. He was dressed as a rabbi. We completely misrepresent him Like have you guys ever seen the show the Chosen? So the way he dressed is probably not how he looked at all.
Speaker 4:That's exactly what I was thinking Like in the show the rabbis are like super.
Speaker 3:I was going to say he probably looked closer to Nicodemus in that representation than he did, as the way he's being portrayed.
Speaker 1:Like that's what he would have looked like With the stones and all that, and wow, well, that's not necessarily the stones, because those were priests.
Speaker 3:The priests had the stones, the breastplate, but the rabbis had the pershaw with the tassels and often the tassels would be different color or different length you would have the, so they could like off the streets like that's a rabbi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, you knew a rabbi. That makes sense too, because people would walk up to Jesus and just refer to him as rabbi, knowing nothing about him. He would say something to them and it'd be like rabbi, and it's like that would make sense, that he would look like a rabbi of the day, right.
Speaker 3:And nobody's going to give the highest honor in their culture To just some random person.
Speaker 1:To just some guy who's teaching.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what I mean, and we even do that today. Right, you could be talking Bible with somebody, and whoever you're talking Bible with could be absolutely brilliant man, you know your stuff. Yeah, this is very insightful and it's good, right, but if they're not an ordained pastor, you're still not going to refer to them pastor.
Speaker 1:You're not just going to call them pastor. Right, it was the same thing for them Highest ideal right. I think that the biggest thing I've gathered. Sorry, go ahead, selena.
Speaker 4:I had a question. You brought up a priest, so what's the difference between a priest and a rabbi?
Speaker 3:So a priest had to be of the line of Aaron. They're in Jerusalem with the temple, right. Because they were the workers of the ground for the temple, they handled everything in the temple, the Levitical rituals, right. So Passover, Slaughtering of the land.
Speaker 1:How do you become a priest versus a rabbi, though? If rabbi was this, you go through all these schools and you're selected a few years.
Speaker 3:If you were, of the tribe of Levi. You were part of the priestly Levitical line. Does that necessarily mean everybody was a priest? Not necessarily. I don't know if you guys remember when Pastor David was doing the episode with John Mark, remember what they called him Stubby fingers. He was the stubby fingers and the way tradition went, because he was at the tribe of Levi as was his cousin Barnabas. So the reason I remember this.
Speaker 3:Why was he stubby fingers? That he chopped off a couple of his fingers because of that deformity that would mean he was exempt from serving priestly duties because he didn't want to do that. It's kind of what that annotates. Did that answer your question?
Speaker 1:Billy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and priests, it seems like they stay more local than they get a specific area.
Speaker 3:They would live throughout the entire land, but at certain times of the year they would all have to go to Jerusalem and what they would do is for certain duties they would cast lots of who got to do what? So when you look back and for example, zachariah in the very beginning in Luke, when it's talking about the birth of John the Baptist and how God comes to him in the temple because his wife is also very old, it's kind of like an Abraham-Sara story and he doesn't believe it, so he gets muted until John the Baptist is born. Why is he in the Holy of Holies? To begin with? Because he's a priest, but only one priest would be selected to go into the Holy of Holies on the day of atonement. They would cast lots. So essentially they're casting lots. Who gets to go in the temple and do that duty?
Speaker 1:Draws the shortest straw because you could die if you did it wrong, but in this case. Plenty of examples in the Old Testament.
Speaker 4:Are they also teaching, though, like rabbis, or is it more practices or traditions? Yes, they would teach too.
Speaker 3:They would teach too, Because it was more on the synagogue system. So to understand politically, most of your priests belong to the Sadducee line of theology. Most of your rabbis belong to the Pharisee line, so this is always. What's kind of interesting is Jesus? He's always going toe-to-toe with Pharisees, but he was probably from a Pharisee tradition.
Speaker 3:He was probably following the teachings of either, like Haleil, for example, was a big one in his day. But you see, he deviates. Sometimes he gives his own commentary because he's Jesus. Right, but Jesus had influence, you've got to remember. Jesus surrendered all capacities in his incarnation, so he had to grow, he had to learn, just like we do.
Speaker 1:He had to do all the same things that we did, and so I was going to say that I think the biggest thing that I've gathered from this is because whenever I read the Bible and Jesus would make these like quippy remarks when the Philistines would ask some question of him or the people would ask a question or someone, and he'd make all these references in the Bible, I was like, oh well, he just knows. Because he's God.
Speaker 1:But then, at the same time, I also knew that well, it's like. Well, he surrendered all his like godly capabilities so that he could die on the cross, but I didn't really think about them. So why does he know all this stuff? Like now, as you're explaining, like this whole system, that he would have gone through something like 10 plus years of school.
Speaker 3:It's just not that he knew it, but people he was talking to knew it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like also the general population had a good understanding. So you could even have these level of discussions with just the general populace and then him going through all the schools and he would have been recognized as someone that had gone through all these schools because he would have been wearing the appropriate attire and people would have recognized him and that's why they always refer to him as Teacher or Rabbi, like off the cuff. It's not Like even if they don't know anything about him, they were because they already knew from what he was wearing.
Speaker 1:So it's like this just provides so much, just like a whole other window being opened of like how to see Jesus, and also it just kind of spits in the face of all these like paintings we've got for summaries.
Speaker 3:On top of them, just making him like a white man with long hair being that whole thing.
Speaker 1:And then on top of that he's usually just wearing like a white gown, when that doesn't make any sense for the day either, because like, who was just wearing a white gown and yet all ever?
Speaker 3:No, he looked more like the Pharisees, as Pharisees are depicted in a lot of those you know like. In terms of the media, Jesus probably looked closer to that than he did. And you're right, he wasn't a white man, right, yeah, At best maybe Wolf's skin Wearing a white sheet Right he doesn't? He also wasn't like he was Middle Eastern right, yeah, but that's like kind of indifferent to me when I'm, it's more of his robe, his attire.
Speaker 3:Yeah would have identified him with authority in terms of religious authority, already before he even reveals himself to be the Son of God. They already would have.
Speaker 1:That's the part that like no one in my life has talked to me about that piece that like he would have been recognized as a religious authority because of the schooling he would have gone through to be a rabbi. And we know he was a rabbi because he was referred to without prompting or without someone having prior knowledge of him as a rabbi. So that means you know he was already kind of dressed in that garb and that attire it's like. But people don't talk like that, they like play down.
Speaker 1:Jesus is just like a common man underdog going against the big guy Right, the Pharisees, the Sadducees that are just trying to put him down. But he's. He's here to pick us all up and carry us to the finish line. I understand the world he's in.
Speaker 3:He was the underdog, the new guy coming onto the scene of ministry.
Speaker 1:So when he starts sparring with a high priest and we talked about that- but it's not like a guy coming off the street and then trying to debate someone who's a Harvard graduate. It's two Harvard graduates debating yeah. No, this is elite schools. Yeah, because I always look at it as like some guy off the street. No, no coming and debating a Harvard graduate.
Speaker 3:like the Pharisees, the Sadducees, but no, it's like it's two graduates debating and and and and having that there were certain things right, so John the Baptist was the same way.
Speaker 1:This is an interesting fact but his, and then also the average person is also a college graduate, just maybe not Harvard.
Speaker 3:At least community college Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:At least community college Bible and knowledge Right, but they.
Speaker 3:But like John the Baptist, who was also a rabbi, you know he had this huge following in historically speaking, like Josephus, for example, the Roman he was, he was a Jew, but he was hired on the behalf of Rome to record the history of the Jews, his people for Rome.
Speaker 3:Right. So Josephus is always a kind of a go to historian that people go to for this stuff. But speaking of that time, he speaks more about John the Baptist than he does. Jesus, yeah, as a rabbi, because he was, John the Baptist was well well, well known. So when it starts talking about, like there's this guy named John, he was baptizing, his yoke Was the message. But what was John the Baptist's yoke? Repent. The kingdom of heaven is here. Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's spreading his yoke. Repent. The kingdom of heaven is here, right, okay, but he was famous Like he. Everybody knew John the Baptist, but he was new. He was just like Jesus, he just got on the scene.
Speaker 1:Was he doing baptism in a new way or was the way he did baptism he was still in line with like Levitical, levitical Lawns?
Speaker 3:I mean a baptism of. They'd had multiple baptisms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Miquva's and all, but I'm like it was unique, the baptism in in the Jordan, baptizing was significant and it was a baptism of repentance, which is a little different than that. Or say like when you were to go in and do a Miquva or a baptism, or like a sin or a guilt offering, like you show up to the temple, you do a baptism and you go provide a sin or guilt offering here, he has them all the way out in the Jordan and he's having them do these repent baptism repentance.
Speaker 3:Right, without the offering separate from the temple, cause he probably came from the ascending community. We thought the temple was all corrupt and which they kind of were yeah, um, but yeah. So there's this whole thing.
Speaker 1:But my point is, like with John the Baptist, it's just like just like the temple's not the point, the repentance is the point, and he's trying to make that.
Speaker 3:Right, but he he was. He became popular and he became this like rock star rabbi, but he was new. So when he spoke out against King Herod and that atrocious situation and Herod goes and takes his head off, why didn't again the political authority of of Israel at the time high priest and all them step in and say you don't want to do that, right, cause even when you see the kind of behind the scenes when they go to kill Jesus, they're like this is politically kind of devastating. Why didn't he have any of that cover? It wasn't just what he was saying, yeah, it was also kind of the fact that there was probably some jealousy in the sense of this new guy shows up, everybody's following him. He doesn't know nothing, right?
Speaker 5:And they let her take, you know, behead him essentially, but so that's a whole another thing.
Speaker 4:I we can't get into that Um but I think I know where my conflicting views come from. Or just growing up and seeing Jesus in a different light Because we read like he his parents don't really have much like they're offering is a dove to doves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, poor man's offering poor man.
Speaker 4:So to me it's like, oh, like he didn't grow up with much. You know, he was born and raised in a barn, and so when I think of a he was born.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4:Um, but when I think of a Pharisee, I think of like wealth and power and influence, and I don't see Jesus that way. I didn't, didn't really think of Jesus.
Speaker 3:Well he. So just keep in mind like everybody went to the school of the book.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Everybody went. It didn't matter. If you're poor, rich, whoever.
Speaker 4:So you didn't have to have money in order to continue past the school age of like 10.
Speaker 1:The point was to carry on the oral tradition. They wanted everyone to know it.
Speaker 3:The rabbi wanted disciples who were going to spread his yoke to the best of his ability. I'm sorry. What was your question?
Speaker 4:Was that school being paid for?
Speaker 3:Well, how did that? It was through the synagogue.
Speaker 1:So it's a state. It's like public school, like paying tithes, it's like going to church. Like the poorest of us go to public school still, and the richest of us can also go to public school, or you can go to fancy private school, but you got guys like Paul. That's the only way I can make it make sense in my head.
Speaker 3:So Paul, um, his rabbi, right, you know, like when we were talking about that he studied under a gamma wheel, but he was. He was probably the most famous rabbi in the entire world, and Paul?
Speaker 1:he said they were contemporaries, right Like they were alive at the same time. Gamas Gamasleil and Paul Gama will yes.
Speaker 3:No, gama, that was someone who says that he studied under gamma wheel, paul.
Speaker 1:That means Paul for his apprenticeship.
Speaker 3:When Paul graduated the school of mid rock his disciple the highest, like most famous rabbi, looked at Paul and said you are good enough to come be my disciple and spread my yoke, which is a big deal for Paul. That's why you see such a zeal for him. That's why he's guarding the clothes when they stone Steven, right, because you're not talking about just a Pharisee. You're talking about Paul, who was like the valid Victorian of Harvard or Yale or you know what I mean Going and studying under the most famous rabbi to spread that most famous rabbi's yoke. That's why, when Paul talks about Galatians, I was advanced beyond my years.
Speaker 3:What's he talking about? He's talking about the fact that, coming out of the school of mid rush, the most famous rabbi that existed decided yeah, you can come be my disciple. That's a big deal. Yeah, that's a huge deal for somebody like Paul. But again to the previous point, though, about trade. Even says that Paul was a tent maker, right, so they all had a trade to sustain themselves in ministry. There was a common thing with rabbis, right? Yeah, and then Paul also would live with different disciples as he traveled like he would kind of bounce between the disciples.
Speaker 1:Well, there was an expectation.
Speaker 3:If you weren't a rabbi, you would have to be a disciple. Yeah, you would have to be a rabbi. We're going to get into this in a little bit, when we get into the rejection. Okay, but if you were rejected from a rabbi but a piece of this is that, okay, I'm not a rabbi, you're a rabbi. You come into town. Essentially, you accomplish to be the ideal I wanted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were able to do what I was not good enough to do so. When you come in saying I need to, place this Because everyone's going down that path.
Speaker 3:Right, this association there. So if you're like I need somewhere to sleep tonight, come into my home. The expectation is that you would go and bring them in and let them sleep right, because they're the ideal that makes sense, that's cool, I guess.
Speaker 1:Ryan if you said you needed a place to crash because your wife kicked you out or something, Because I decided to follow the stranger in the gym. Yeah, then you could stay here, that's fine. Thank you, I would not deny that.
Speaker 3:Well, so here's the other thing about the disciples. There are other important things, though. Faster. If you were accepted to be someone's disciple, the idea is that you would emulate your teacher, your rabbi, in every way possible. So this is how intense. It got right. You would not just learn how to study their way to follow the same spiritual habits. So the way Jesus prayed is the way they're going to pray right.
Speaker 3:The way your rabbi prayed is the way you would pray. When your rabbi prayed is when you would pray when it says spreading the yoke. You are emulating that rabbi to the T, to the point that when that rabbi goes and uses the bathroom, all his disciples will follow him behind him. Oh, my goodness Little minions, and they will go use the restroom too. They want to emulate him to the very T of everything to include bowel movements, right?
Speaker 3:Wow, they wanted to be like him in absolutely every single way. That's why the rabbi was like are you good enough to be me? That's essentially what they're saying.
Speaker 3:Are you good enough to spread my yoke to be me, and if you get accepted, then you're going to be like I'm going to do all I can to be you. Wow, when are you going to the bathroom? That's when I'm going to the bathroom. Wow, If you picked up a straw of string and put it in your mouth, if your rabbi did that I'm picking up a straw and I'm putting it in my mouth. You're playing copycat essentially the entire way.
Speaker 1:It's the same way we do stars today.
Speaker 3:So also there's another thing. If you were well, two other things. If you were accepted a common saying that people would give to you as a congratulations because that's a big deal they would say may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi. And the idea is that you follow this rabbi so closely, you do such a good job that as you follow him along the dirt road, all the dust he kicks up from his sandals covers you with that dust. May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi is kind of the expression. Wow, so it was a big deal. If you got accepted, like that's celebrations. You couldn't make a mom or dad more proud. You probably couldn't make your wife more proud. You know what?
Speaker 3:I'm saying so. The other thing, too. I think it was also interesting, though, is that disciples also weren't allowed. And this is oral law. This isn't Levitical written law. This is oral law. But just as you memorize all of Torah, you memorize all of the Old Testament. Memorize, commentary you were to press within memory the teachings of your rabbi. Yeah, you were not allowed to write it down.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that's why the gospel of Mark they call Peter's gospel. Well, why didn't Peter just write the gospel? Because Peter's probably following the tradition of oral law. No, that's my rabbi. I'm not going to write down, I'm committing to memory Everything he said, the teachings of Jesus Wow. So you have Mark, who is listening to Peter preach what Jesus preached in the way Jesus preached, because he was a disciple, right? Yeah, so you see Minic everything about everything he does, and he writes it down because yes, we are all disciples of Christ, right.
Speaker 3:Mark was a disciple of Christ in the modern sense of the word. Yeah, in the technical sense of the word, in the way Mark would have viewed that he would have been like. No Christ is my. Jesus is my Lord. He's my Messiah, he's my king. He wasn't my rabbi. Yeah, I'm not his disciple.
Speaker 3:So he would have been fine writing that down when Peter was like no, that was my rabbi. I can't write that down, it's all committed to memory. That's why, when you get to Luke, the gospel of Luke, it's really him probably just doing interviews with all of Jesus' disciples, Right, but he's writing it down because Luke was a disciple of Jesus, Right. When you look at the gospel of Matthew, there's a lot of debate around that book whether it was at the disciple of Matthew or different rabbi Matthew, who was a believer, obviously, but he was probably, maybe discipled, or it's a rabbi who was discipled by the apostle Matthew, so it's so. It may be a more appropriate way to write those realistically would have been the gospel according to the gospel, the gospel according to you.
Speaker 1:See some of those the gospel, according to John.
Speaker 3:But it's not necessarily the gospel written by John or the gospel written by. You know what I'm saying. But besides the point, but they weren't allowed to write it, so it's just kind of how it influenced the gospels and the way they were written, because they're just by memory Committing everything, Committing everything of what Jesus taught.
Speaker 1:I think that that's really good in a way, because I mean how I want to explain this. So when I write things down, it's so I don't have to think about it and I can just refer back to it when I need it. But if I have to, if I commit something to memory, it's like every few minutes I have to force myself to remember it so that I don't forget to do it later. Like those like where, moments where I don't have like an internal ticker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like where I don't have note taking gear physically on me and I like have to talk to my boss about something and he like gives me a task.
Speaker 1:It sucks if he gives it to me in the middle of the discussion because now I'm just going to be repeating that task to myself until I leave his office and I can write it down, because I don't want to forget how he gave the task and how he expressed his intent so that I can complete the task accurately. Now, if I have the note-taking gear on me, I just write it down, close my little notebook and now I'm fully back engaged with the conversation with him. I'm not trying to remember exactly how he said the thing, but if I knew that one, everything that came out of his mouth I needed to remember and I need to remember how he said it and what his intent was behind what he said, and I need to commit all of that to memory all of the time. And I couldn't write it down. That is a totally different way. Well, I'm completely involved mentally in how they're engaged and you even see this now, like you were to go to Israel.
Speaker 3:You see guys kind of pacing back and forth on the street and it just kind of almost looks like they're crazy. But what they're really doing is they're reciting Torah or Bible, trying to memorize it right, like young men, older it's like oh, they probably have a rabbi, we just gave them a teaching and they are repeating the teaching over and over.
Speaker 3:So what was the life of the disciples like when? So you have all the stories and interactions, the crazy right Like the good ones, with Jesus healing people and things like that. But most of that day to day of him just teaching, the day to day life of the disciples was probably follow Jesus, hear what he says and then study memorize, memorize, memorize, yeah it goes and does something and they are there memorizing, memorizing Wow, to putting it in the brain.
Speaker 3:And guys like me, like I, have to write things down if I wanted to be long lasting memory just the way my brain works right, the way I've trained my brain right, Like different culture may have been different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you started at eight with memorizing like large books. Six, yeah, six, it's a memorizing large books. Like you, probably would be able to just memorize stuff, get those narrow pathways.
Speaker 3:Good for it, right, but so anyways, that's like. So the concept of being brought in to be a disciple of Jesus, like even the idea of dropping everything you have to follow the disciple or to follow a rabbi, like that wasn't even unique to Jesus, in the sense that Jesus wasn't the only one who was demanding. In fact, like what we just read, you'll find a rest for your souls from my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So, in other words, my teaching, my doctrine, what I demand of you, is much lighter than what all the other rabbis are demanding, you know what I'm saying Like, we look at it as like, oh, it's so demanding to follow, it's like, comparatively, no, it's not.
Speaker 3:There was such an enslavement of a lot of the, the yokes of what a lot of other rabbis in that day that he's like I'm freeing you right. Like my burden is light, my yoke is light.
Speaker 1:I could see that, because even to have depravity knows no limits, even amongst the best of humans.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about, though. Then what if you were rejected? Okay, because this gets into a lot of what we're talking about, right, if you were rejected, this is what you would hear. This is what the rabbi would tell you. If you if you're at mid rush you got to the school and like, hey, I'm graduating Harvard, can I go be part of your big law firm, right, or whatever. Can I? Be a fellow they ask you questions.
Speaker 3:You get interviewed. It's all complicated, right, and if you do not do well, and this would have you would have been told this like if, say, you graduated the the school of the book, right, learning just Torah, but you weren't even at that level as like a 10 year old good enough to go into the school of Talmud.
Speaker 3:Or if you're made into the school of Talmud but not going to have to go to the school of midrash right At any level. This is what you were told if you were rejected. Okay, you were told. Essentially told this son, you know Torah, but you cannot be my disciple. Go home, have children and pray that they may become a rabbi and be better men than you. Go home and ply your trade, in other words, go home and learn the family business. Yeah, okay, so understanding that that was the rejection that most Jewish boys heard at some point in their life. Yeah, yeah, okay, essentially you're not good enough.
Speaker 3:You're not smart enough. There's no way that you would be able to emulate me. You're not capable of doing this. Go home, have children. Raise your sons to be a better man than you. Raise them to be better than you so that maybe they could go be a rabbi, but you can't yeah, right, sorry, go learn your trade, go learn a trade right so.
Speaker 3:Be fruitful and multiply With all that understood right and that kind of rejection. By the way, I was thinking about this how much the fear of rejection runs the world Right now, or Just in general? Okay, like people, say the top two fears people have are fear of rejection. People say the top two fears people have is the fear of death and the fear of public speaking. Okay, why are people afraid of public speaking? Because they're afraid of mass rejection.
Speaker 3:They're afraid that you're up there and they're like this is really scary. This is nerve-wracking and if I don't do well, I'm going to get rejected by all these people at once or increase probability. Maybe they don't all reject me, but there's enough of them out there that maybe one of them does Right and our fear of rejection is deep. I would even argue. The fear of death plays into the same intrinsic understanding that we have in ourselves that there's accountability for our lives. So when I die, I have a valid fear of being rejected.
Speaker 1:By my God.
Speaker 3:In my judgment, right. So I would even say the primary fear most people have is rejection. I taught a study with men the five things men struggle with. One of them is fear of failure. Why are men so afraid to fail? Well, because if a man fails, right, and this is more like the realities of men in society, but if a man fails, he's largely rejected by society.
Speaker 1:Women reject you, bosses reject you, families have expectations for you, and it becomes like a downward spiral as well, it's very hard to reset once, like if that relationship fails, and then you then then let's say that emotional kind of spirals into like your job, and then your job fails, and then you take that anger and then you take it out on your family, and now your family's. It's like it kind of just becomes this like unfortunate spiral if you don't stop it, right. But it's.
Speaker 3:That's why there's such a fear for men to fail, though right, it's rejection based, and if you even look at the deepest hurts that people experience from people, they're generally rejection based. Why is adultery so painful? The spouse cheats Right Like. Why does that? Why does that cut so deep? You know what I'm?
Speaker 3:saying Because it's not just like, well, because they were unfaithful. Yeah, but why does that hurt? Right, because there's almost a sense of rejection that's felt there. Yeah, right, this is why men who have such a hard time understanding by their wives don't like them watching porn, because it's well from their perspective. You're rejecting me and what I can give you and you have to go find it somewhere else. Yeah, it's a sense of rejection. You know what I'm saying? Like all these things, like parents leaving kids right, even in the sense of divorce, right, but with the kids that are kind of caught in the middle, like there's a sense of rejection.
Speaker 1:They feel in that because, because they're not good enough to stay together for right, like there's all these things and the kids end up blaming themselves and like well, like mom, love dad because because of me, and it's like no, please, that's why there's like a very deliberate conversation People who are going through a divorce with children have.
Speaker 3:This isn't your fault. We're not rejecting you. Right, Like it's a very. I guess my point is is that rejection is a undergirding principle of the reality and the suffering of life. Yeah, that that generate most people their fears, their anxieties, their stresses A lot of that is this rejection. Right, Then you looked at in a culture of of first century AD with the Jewish boy and if I wasn't good enough to go be a rabbi at some point, I would have heard you know, Torah, good job, but you can't be my disciple. You need to go raise better men than you. Yeah, Cause you're not good enough. That's, that's the rejection.
Speaker 3:So I guess what I'm saying is, when Jesus is walking along the shoreline, he looks over what? Why are Peter and Andrew and John and James fishing? Well, why is the son of Zebedee, or why is Zebedee that James and John are the son of? Why are they fishermen? Because they were told at some point you're not good enough to continue on, go learn a trade instead and raise better men. Yeah, Right, that's what they were told. That's why they're fishing to begin with, Right? So with all that said, right, what's kind of reread the target text here, because I think now it's going to start. It's no longer a musical right. This now makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 1:I do want to highlight the difference between their schooling then and our schooling now, because our schooling now is very focused on general education that will make you the best worker in the economy, and so it's like we're teaching you this a wide variety of things over time so that you can find a trade that you're interested in, so that you can participate in the economy Like that's the general purpose of public education right, get you out into the workforce so that you can participate in the economy, but back then and which allows you to have very different ideals and kind of things that you're being driven towards. But here it's like everyone is going into the school with the same end in mind I need to do as good as I can to hopefully make it all the way to the end to be a rabbi, and if I fail at any point, it's the same rejection, and then you can do anything else with your life, but you know that you failed at the ultimate ideal that you were the ultimate ideal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were going for it and everyone has that same kind of in the back of their head. I'm doing this because I wasn't good enough to be a rabbi.
Speaker 3:So imagine, just imagine, right, and this like imagine a boy who gets rejected just after Torah school, right? They didn't have IEPs and special education back then. Like they didn't understand that kids have learning disabilities, right? Like imagine even a 10 year old who may be struggling with a learning disability. Who wants to go be the ideal, yeah, and instead like imagine a 10 year old, but take our ideal, right? Take a 10 year old. Like what do you want to be? I want to be a scientist.
Speaker 3:Well, son, you know math, but you are not good enough to be a scientist At 10. Go learn a trade, go learn to be an electrician, go do HVAC.
Speaker 1:Have kids Right, raise better men, but you need to raise better men than you, because you are not good enough, right.
Speaker 3:That's essentially what they were doing to these kids, right? So, with that said, let's read it, okay.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Back at Matthew 4, verse 18. But as rabbi Jesus was walking beside, I added the rabbi just for everybody. But as rabbi Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galley, he saw two brothers, simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come follow me, jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, james, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father's, zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Speaker 3:So, now you understand. You got these boys. They're men. They're men now. But these men who are fishermen because they were told they're not good enough to be a disciple of a rabbi.
Speaker 1:I'm fishing because I'm not good enough to be a rabbi. Right here it comes, and so is their father.
Speaker 3:So here comes a rabbi. I'm a tax clerk.
Speaker 1:I'm not good enough to be a rabbi. Any job that they're doing, they're doing it because they weren't good enough to be a rabbi, so they went and learned to trade.
Speaker 3:This also makes it a little more so.
Speaker 1:So this is going to lead to crazy.
Speaker 3:We're some of the context. We always look at what the radical part of Jesus' ministry was in terms of calling was drop everything you're doing, come follow me. We're like oh my gosh, I can't believe you. That standard, all rabbis did that. What's different, what's radical that we don't appreciate as much is who he was calling to be disciples. Yeah, so when it talks about the tax collectors, when it talks about right, the lowest of society, he's saying they were rejected. My disciple?
Speaker 1:they probably didn't make it past the 10 year old. What is he saying?
Speaker 3:to them. You are good enough, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, so when the I will make you, he's saying I will make you good enough, I'll make you fishes of men. So when you're saying they're good enough. He's saying I will make you good enough.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, no. So what's backup? When Peter and Andrew are there fishing and they see this rabbi give him the rabbinical affirmation essentially have come follow me, spread my yoke. I'm going to talk a little more about in a second. When he says come, follow me, spread my yoke. What every Jewish boy wants to hear, right, yeah, that they were rejected and they never heard. Here comes the rabbi and says hey, come follow me, spread my yoke. Right, what they are hearing is not just go follow right this path, but they're hearing affirmatively. This is the beauty that we miss. But they're hearing initially you are good enough, you are able, you can be like me, you're capable to do what I need you to do. You are good enough to be my disciple. So then you increase that with a knowledge of, then, who Jesus ultimately proves himself to be, over the course of his ministry, over the course of his crucifixion his resurrection, his ascension, hearing that rabbi tell you you are good enough, you are able, you can be like me.
Speaker 3:You see what I'm saying. You see that underlying beauty that we miss just in that one statement that they hear. And what's even cooler is when it says come, follow me. Jesus said Now what a rabbi would generally say come follow me and spread my yoke, as he did in the previous one, right and Matthew 11 that we went over. But hold on, yeah, go ahead. Notice what he says here. He says I'm going to say spread my yoke. What he says come follow me and spread my yoke, no. And he says and I will send you out to fish for people. I'll make you fishers of men. In other words what he is saying. He's assigning mission and purpose to his yoke. He's like you're coming in not just to spread my yoke. Here's what my yoke is, and my yoke is that I'm going to be sending you out right to spread my yoke, but you're going to be fishers of men. You're going to be bringing men into this.
Speaker 1:That's what you're going to do. I really feel like I'm kind of like experiencing the epilogue of a like a who made Lord of the Rings Because I told him See the musical right. I told you the musical and the marriage is going back to the fifth.
Speaker 1:Well, it's because it's it's it's interesting, and I'll just like kind of walk through everything that I'm thinking right now. So you have a society that's built where this ideal is to be a rabbi. This is the highest ideal you can achieve. And you have these men that have gone and through the process to hopefully one day be that ideal and you can you can like place plenty of like shows and movies into this kind of like structure.
Speaker 1:Um, and they weren't good enough, they didn't reach that ideal and they basically were kicked out or dropped out of the school. And then you have a someone who has mastered the craft at the school and graduated now comes to them and says I will it's like, you are good enough, follow me and I will make you that ideal. And then you go through the entire, you know, arc of Jesus's life and he has killed and he goes off, and he gives the, the final call to the disciples to go out and be witnesses. And then you see Peter now it he's just the example I'm using, but all the disciples are now fulfilling that ideal that they were rejected from.
Speaker 1:So if this is like, let's say this like a 12 episode series, like on the end of the 12th episode is Peter telling this this story of how he was rejected and then called and now he's fulfilling the ideal that he was, that feel he was born into Not just the ideal but, yes, feeling the ideal. The ideal that the society told him he was born to do. But he was rejected from the society rejected him from.
Speaker 3:So it's not just that the world rejected. So I think a part of the story right. It's not just that the world rejected Jesus, it's that the world also rejected the disciples of Jesus. And now the people that were rejected and said you aren't good enough are now the ones, like in the book of acts, we're now spreading the God's, his yoke, yeah, who are the most respected, the most sought after, the most?
Speaker 1:It's like, oh my God.
Speaker 3:On the baptist. His yoke was repent. Kingdom of heaven is here. Jesus's yoke was the gospel right, proven by the resurrection, which was very radical, message right, and the whole book of acts now is them spreading the yoke of Jesus, of rabbi Jesus.
Speaker 1:That is. That is awesome, Like played out, Like it's such a oh my gosh. I see it's like a painted tapestry, I can see.
Speaker 3:I think the beauty of it is this is that, because the same call that Christ had for them, it's the same call he has for everyone of us, and I think many people, either through a sense of self rejection, a fear, that of that same rejection, like, okay, I feel I'm being called to do anything, anything ministry, maybe it's start serving in the nursery on Sundays to going to be a pastor, or even just talking to someone, whatever, or in your family, whatever, maybe but whatever that calling that they're feeling, there's almost the same fear of well, what if they reject me?
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, and I think, like the thing we miss when Jesus?
Speaker 1:what if they reject me? It's like I've been rejected and I don't want to be rejected again.
Speaker 3:And what people need to remember is that when Jesus gives you the call, come follow me wherever he leads you to follow him, whatever ministry, whatever right that may look like, he is telling you, but when I'm calling you to do, you are enough, you are enough to serve me in that position. You are capable, you are able to do this right, you're a firm. He is affirming them Right. So when the rest of the world may say no, he's affirming them. It says I don't really care what they say. What I am telling you is you're enough, right, that's what they're hearing. That is the words are come follow me. The messages, come follow him because you are capable and enough. And I think that's the same message. I know I don't want to sound like Joel Olstein here, right, like that is the met. That is what they would have heard as a young Jewish boy at some point. I don't know how far Peter went. Yeah, right, he's already married at this point, so he's probably been out of this for a bit. So I got this particular point.
Speaker 1:And I was also known as generally it's the oldest he was all the disciples.
Speaker 3:Most the other disciples were teenagers. Yeah.
Speaker 3:For the most, by our standards, like they were probably between the ages of 16 and probably 20. Peter was the only one who could have been anywhere between 22 up into his 30s, maybe around the same age as Jesus. But my point is is that I think the message for people, if you're struggling with answering a call, whatever those next steps may be, because you're feeling maybe insufficient, I'm not smart enough, I'm not biblically literate enough, maybe I'm not you know, I'm not going to quote spiritual enough If you're feeling, that call what he's not just calling you to purpose, he's telling you, he's calling you to worth. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you're being called to purpose at the same time being called to worth to carry the title disciple carries the sense of worth that you are enough, you are good enough, you're capable to emulate Christ and all that he does. So that's the other thing. Okay Is that. It's not just that. He's showing us the way Right. So, just as the rabbi would notice, when Jesus is on the night, he's arrested, he's in the garden of the sentiment, he's praying. What is his? What are his disciples doing? Sleeping? They're praying with. Well, they go there to pray with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then they fell asleep. They fall asleep, right. Sorry, because they're emulating him, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they just kind of got deficient and he gets angry with them.
Speaker 3:Right, he comes back. He's like you can't you guys can't stay awake, like of all the times that you were going to emulate me, like you were following me when I went poop, but you can't stay here and pray with me now. Yeah, right, like he gets upset. Right, if you're going to emulate me, emulate me in things that actually matter, Right, and he's getting kind of because he's stressed, he's about to get arrested. Right, because he's angry. Because they were capable and they were worthy enough to be there with him in the first place.
Speaker 1:You, know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:So for us, the calling comes with a sense of purpose, a sense of worth, but also an understanding that we can do this. But the life Jesus lived, we can live. We're going to mess up, obviously, right, but you just follow his example of what did he do? He prayed a lot, yeah, he did a lot of time in fellowship. He served people. He loved people humbly. When people, as a rabbi, right May the may, you be covered by the dust of your rabbi, right Like. That's why the whole sense of washing of the feet who's washing whose feet? If you're following a rabbi into someone's home, right Like, generally it would be the servants or the women of the home, but they would go wash the rabbi's feet. Yeah Right, disciples are watching he's getting his feet washed. How did he do it? How did he respond? Okay, my turn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, oh my gosh, you can do the exact same thing right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Right. So when Jesus comes and turns around and says no, no, no, I'm going to wash your feet.
Speaker 3:The rabbi is going to wash your feet as an example. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, that is what is culturally completely different. The people he's calling tax collectors, all those who are rejected, not in a general sense, right, but like any, because remember, the calling was you know, torah, you're not going to have to be my disciple. Go home, raise better men. The rejection was Right, yeah. So for you to go be a tax collector is now to go be a worse man than you were when you were rejected. Yeah, right. So it is almost a completely, it is a full on rejection back, right. I think a lot of what some of those tax collectors like I'm rejecting them back because of, maybe, their initial rejection with Torah.
Speaker 1:They're like fine, well, I'll do this.
Speaker 4:I mean I can see why they were so. The disciples were so devastated too when Jesus died, and we read that they just go back well hiding but also go back to do their trade because they lost their rabbi. Right so. I yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's so. That's piece one. The second thing I want to kind of point out, though, that there were some disciples who were already disciples of John, and disciples of John the Baptist, I mean it. It talks about how a lot were weaving John to go be disciples of Jesus.
Speaker 1:For John the Baptist leaving John the Baptist to go, to Jesus to go to Jesus right.
Speaker 3:That was almost never heard of. That would have been absolutely humiliating for. John the Baptist that as a rabbi, I have all my disciples and all my disciples have now left me for another rabbi. If you remember, like this becomes a thing, but John responds with great humility.
Speaker 3:He says I must become lesser so he could become greater. Right, because that you're talking massive humiliation on the sense of a rabbi, on in terms of a ministry sense, like that's like essentially saying, like I'm handing over my entire church, over to this other church down the street for the sake that they can grow and be better than we are right, yeah.
Speaker 3:Based off whatever. Like that is a humiliating thing for for a rabbi to do. And that's why you start seeing a little bit of John the Baptist out later when he's like he's in prison. He's kind of filling down on himself. Jesus says like nobody born of a woman is greater than John, which also is an argument for why maybe John the Baptist was his rabbi, because of how highly he speaks of John. But besides the point. But when John's down on himself and he says that he sends some of his disciples to go to Jesus yeah, so John still had a group of people who were following him he says well, go tell them what you've seen and heard, right, and and and. Because I think part of what John's in prison is like I just gave up all my disciples and I'm here in prison Like I don't see any, like did I just do this for no reason? Is this an ultimate humiliation? You know what I mean? Yeah, so there's a lot of emotions loaded behind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you don't know how. You don't know how you're going to be remembered, you don't know how people truly see you never really get that. And he was in prison, not able to see what Jesus was doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he wasn't seeing the healings, he wasn't even I'm saying so, but my point is this is, though is that there's a couple, if you remember the calling of Nathan, we did that one episode, yeah, and he goes back and he says, well, I saw you under the fig tree and he's like surely you're the son of God? Right, I was like, well, what was it? And we're like, but you realize that what Jesus was doing was anchoring at a Zachariah Right, so he was tying a personal situation of Nathan, but also tying it to Zachariah, also tying it to it, right, like there was this layered approach of scripture. Yeah, well, that, that that's school midrash. What Jesus did when he presented that to Nathan was a technique of midrash. That that was a technique that somebody who went to the school of midrash would understand Nathan did.
Speaker 3:Well, why did Nathan understand it? Cause he had also graduated from the school of midrash, cause he had found his rabbi in John the Baptist. Oh, okay, so he already has a rabbi. He too has gone to midrash, and, if you remember, when he, jesus, shows up, hey, we found the Messiah. Remember, we said that, at best, he was kind of like an intellectual snob. He's an intellectual snob because he has a rabbi already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see what I'm saying, and he's gone through all these schools as well, so he knew he's also a Harvard graduate, exactly, and he already has his rabbi.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to leave my rabbi for so, so he is less apt. So the reason you see Peter and Andrew immediately drop go follow him. Well, they didn't have a rabbi. They were rejected. And Nathan and Phillips case they already had a rabbi. And now you start seeing this hesitancy of well, let's have a debate about this, let's have a midrash about this Right, and Jesus gives them a midrash. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Here we go. He's like, but he tied it to a personal thing that could only be revealed by the spirit. So that's what gets Nathan to be like. You are this. You are the Messiah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Not only that, you were able to tie that, he used a midrash rabbinical technique, tied to a personal situation, to penetrate the heart of Nathan. Right, I guess I would say a couple of things is one being called to be a disciple of Christ is one one. You're expected to be a student. Let's just start there. Yeah, the reason a rabbi was considered the highest of society was because study was considered the highest form of worship, right? So, okay, that is the highest form of worship. So, if you're going to be serious about being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, you have to be a student, you have to study, you have to be engaged Right, like we don't even memorize, but they were memorizing to be a disciple, right?
Speaker 1:But we do At least you can do.
Speaker 3:And they didn't even have bibles, like they didn't know. Yeah, you know. I mean they had to go to the synagogue to be able to pull out scrolls to memorize. You have it at your fingertips, you can have it on your phone. Yeah, at the very least, start studying. Don't just read, but study it Right, go to Bible studies, go, get engaged deeper into the word and be a good student, right?
Speaker 3:The second thing I would say this is understand that whatever that calling is, whatever self doubts you may have about yourself, the very fact that you are called means that you are already considered enough. You're considered a birdie, you are considered able to be a disciple, yeah, right. The third thing, which kind of goes in I don't want to say a deviated point, but a disciple in those days chose their rabbi and, just like the second set of disciples who already had a teacher, who already had a rabbi, john, who was good, he was the most famous rabbi, probably in Israel at that time, yeah, and Gamalil was up in. I mean, he was in like Turkey, right, like in Israel, in that area, john, they had the most famous rabbi as their teacher. They had to make a decision who the supreme teacher in their life was going to be? Who were they going to be a disciple of?
Speaker 3:And beyond just being encouraged by the fact that you are enough, that you are worthy and that you do have an obligation to study, but also making the conscious choice that Jesus is the supreme teacher of your life, what that means is that when you hear all this stuff coming from the world, when you have very smart other modern day Harvard elites right, pushing forward all these ideas, whether it's gender ideology, sexual ideology, any of that stuff that you want to maybe believe, right when that conflicts with what Jesus teaches, who is your teacher? Who is your supreme teacher? Are you taking the modern Harvard elite? Are you taking Simeon Freud? Are you taking the philosophy of Nietzsche or Kant or whoever? Or are you taking the teachings of Christ? Who is the supreme? Who are you a disciple of? Because one thing that would have been absolutely ridiculous, right why Nathan was so hesitant to initially jump ship, was that you can't have two teachers. You can't be a disciple of two different, two different philosophies, two different teachers. You cannot spread the yoke of two different teachers or two different rabbis.
Speaker 3:You have to choose a yoke. So what is the yoke? The worldly yoke, whatever that may be, or the yoke of Christ, which is the gospel Absolutely? And what yoke do you choose to spread in the circles in your life? Right, and many people associate themselves to Christ, but they spread the yoke of someone else, another teacher of the world and you need to really understand to be called a disciple.
Speaker 3:you're capable, you're worthy, all those things, but you also have to make a choice of whose yoke are you fully, 100%, bought in to spread across the circles of your life? So I'll leave it with this last thing my hope for everybody, myself included, for this upcoming week. I mean we all be covered by the dust of our rabbi, who is Jesus right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that point. I just wanted to say thank you for painting that tapestry for me, because I think this is one of your best examples of kind of building the society and explaining the foundation of the world and the rules and all that and then explaining the characters. Explaining like this is like classic world building, like you did a fantastic job with like really good, like classic world building, like if you were going to write a novel. Like this is a good foundation of how to write good novels, because you laid out this is the structure of society, this is how it's different than the society that we're in now, this is the rules that they were playing by and this is why that rejection would have hurt so much and why that call would have meant so much. And so I hope that as you go into the week, you feel that call and when you do feel like you are called, that you understand how much it really means. So thank you so much for that, ryan People. I still love this week. Amen.
Speaker 4:Thank you for tuning in to Real Bible Stories. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review, share and subscribe to be notified each week when we upload new episodes. Real Bible Stories is produced in partnership with Palm Church in 29 Palms, california. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and Bible studies, please check out the church website at palmsbaptistchurchcom or check them out on Facebook, instagram or YouTube. Real Bible Stories can be found wherever podcasts are found. Thank you again and we will see you next week.