Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus
Dr. Roy Blizzard
(transcribed by Dr. Barry Fike)
Part One
The Bible tells us that in the last days prior to the return of the Lord that a number of interesting and significant things are going to happen. These things are given as signs to the body of believers to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord. Of course the Bible tell us that no man knows the day nor hour of the Lord’s coming, and there is an old Rabbinical saying that a man should repent one hour before his death. The students asked the Rabbi, how can a man repent one hour before his death when no one knows the hour in which he is going to die? The Rabbi said, that’s the point. A man needs to always be in an attitude of repentance because he does not know when the Lord is going to come. So, we need always be living in momentary anticipation of the coming of the Lord. He could come at any time.
The Bible tells us that in the last days there is going to be a number of exciting things take place. To me I believe that one of the most exciting of all is the fact that there is going to be, in the last days, an increase in knowledge. We have not given that the careful attention that it deserves by the body of Christ. We’re looking at more phenomenal events: earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars and none of these things really excite me to any degree. But the increase of knowledge and it’s not talking about knowledge in so far as secular knowledge is concerned. If we were going to discuss the subject of secular knowledge we could talk about how knowledge, in the secular field, and scientific disciplines has increased two and three four and then two and three fold again since 1945. Just think what has happened in your lifetime and mine. I believe that the knowledge that it’s talking about here in so far as we are concerned is the knowledge of the word of God. The knowledge not just of the word of God but a knowledge of God and a knowledge of who we are in God. I do not think that this is any mere coincidence that there is a reason for it. That reason, I believe, is something that we have often overlooked as Christians. Knowledge is power and ignorance is powerlessness. I do not believe that when the Lord comes that he’s going to come for a little skinny, shriveled, disheveled, snaggy tooth bride impotent and ineffectual with a wart on the end of her nose. I believe that when he comes he’s coming for a bride that is beautiful, clothed in the wedding garments and is moving out in the dimension of power, authority, operation, victory, unprecedented in the course of human history. For the church, the bride, to move in that kind of dimension of power, she has to move in knowledge. The Bible says for lack of knowledge the people perish.
What is the principle commission to the church? We’ve never understood this. As a matter of fact we don’t even know what church is. I know what church is…that’s when the organ starts playing and the choir marches out and we all stand up and sing together the opening song, the preacher leads us in the invocation, then we all sit down sing three all songs, and then we take up the offering, the preacher stands up and preaches a sermon. But to whom does he preach? Saved folks. Then we all stand up again and have the invitation hymn, the benediction and we all go home and that’s church. That’s not church that’s just some kind of mickey mouse game that we’ve been playing for about 1500 years and most of us don’t know what’s going on out there. We’ve never understood the difference between the didasko of the word and the kerusko of the word. Didasko is teaching…Kerusko is preaching. What’s the commission to the church? Go into all of the world and make disciples. But we don’t know what a disciple is because we’re looking at it in the English or the Greek and we’re confused about what is a disciple. In Hebrew a disciple is a talmid and that means a student. The picture is of the student sitting at the feet of the Rabbi who is giving them instruction. Then once they have been instructed they are to do what? What is the commission of the church? To go and make disciples and then do what? Baptize them and continue to teach them and to instruct them to bring them into a maturity of the word. Teach, baptize, Teach…but what about preaching? Who is supposed to be a preacher? Every believer is supposed to be a preacher. Besides you don’t have to be very smart to be a preacher. As a matter of fact you don’t have to go to Bible College, you don’t have to graduate from some Theological Seminary, and you don’t have to know much at all in order to be a preacher. I can teach you everything that you need to know in 10 seconds to be a preacher. What is a preacher? One who proclaims the good news? What is the good news? Jesus Christ died, buried, rose again, ascended to the right hand of the father, and salvation is available to all those that come to God through him. That is the kerusko of the word that is the eugelion and that’s all that you need to know to be a preacher. Now someone says, that’s interesting…tell me more and that’s where teaching comes in. You actually have to know more to be a teacher. You have to know that you don’t know. When someone wants more instruction and you don’t know anymore, tell them that you know where you can go and find out. You never to be afraid to say, I don’t know. I don’t know is a perfectly logical response to any question if you don’t know the answer. More preacher need to learn that and more teachers need to learn that and more Christians need to learn that. I don’t know.
But the emphasis, the commission to God people, where is it? I believe the greatest sin that believers are committing today is a failure to heed the admonition of the apostle Paul when he said, “Study to show yourself approved unto God a workman that need not be ashamed because you know how to rightly interpret the word of truth.” That’s what we’re here to do this evening is to set the foundation for you that you can begin to build on that foundation the house on the solid rock that’s going to be able to stand when all of the fiery darts of the wicked one are directed against it. There’s only one house that’s going to stand and that’s truth. The truth of God’s word. What is it? We’ve been busy for so long playing our little theological games that we haven’t understood the commission, ourselves, the nature of God, and our problem has been one of ignorance and ignorance is powerlessness.
When it comes to our Bible reading we have to admit that many of us are lax in reading the Bible and studying the word that would give us the knowledge to move out in power and authority and victory. Then, whenever, we do study, most of us begin our study on the basis of false premises that we’ve been taught for a number of years. This may come as a surprise to you but we have been taught in error a number of things. As a matter of fact, perhaps the larger part of what we believe and think as Christians today in organized Ecclesiastical Christianity is wrong and has been wrong because it was founded on the basis of Protestantism of the 16th, 17th or 18th century, or the Catholicism of the Middle ages and the Dark Ages. There has never been an attempt made on the part of God’s people to go back of Protestantism, to go back of Catholicism, and go all the way back to the historical foundations of our faith, which, by the way, are not rooted in the Gentile theology of the third, fourth and fifth centuries. They are firmly rooted in the Judaism of the first century in Palestine. It might come as a surprise to you that Jesus was a Jew. There are some folks that really have never come to grips with that. They think that he was a Protestant and was a member of Baptist church that John founded. But I’m excited that in these days in which we live, the religious climate is changing. We are no longer moving and acting in a dimension of nothing more than emotion and experience. God’s people are beginning to rise up and move in a dimension of knowledge and understanding and power. It results from a number of exciting things that have happened in just the last few years. It all started with a number of archaeological discoveries that were made with which most of you are familiar. The most significant was the Dead Sea Scrolls. Do you remember in 1947, and then in 1956, in a series of caves, approximately 13, along the western short of the Dead Sea at the northern end over 40,000 scroll fragments were found representing some 400 different books of the Bible in addition to other scrolls such as commentaries on the Bible, scrolls governing the religious life and activity of the people who lived in this peculiar little Jewish community called Qumran. It’s located about 4 to 5 miles in a straight line where we read about John the Baptist baptizing in the wilderness. As a result of those scrolls there began a revolution in our understanding of the word of God. Prior to the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls a method of biblical interpretation, called higher biblical criticism, had reigned for 250 years. It was started back in 1751 with a French physician by the name of Jean Austruck and it reached its culmination in the 19th century, about 1856, and then 1876, with a man by the name of Groff and another by the name of Velhausen in Germany that proposed a hypothesis that is known as the documentary hypothesis that said that all of the books of the O.T. were based on one of four different sources. The Jehovah source, the Elohim source, the Deut. Source or the Priestly source none of which dated any earlier than 850 B.C. which of course immediately eliminates any possibility of Mosaic authorship or divine inspiration. From the basis of these various sources, one was able to go to the Bible and divide the passages in the O.T. into a patchwork of JEP or D based upon the usage of divine names on parallel or duplicate accounts or on the variation in diction and style that one found in the Hebrew in the Masoretic texts of the O.T. Until we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then just like someone took the rug and yanked it out from under their feet, the whole of the documentary hypothesis came tumbling down. Not only the documentary hypothesis but the whole German school of theology that had also been telling us, and there are very few people that are aware of this fact, that this idea came to us from the same German school that gave us the documentary hypothesis. The N.T. was written in Greek and that Jesus spoke Aramaic. We know today, on the basis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and all of the other of our archaeological findings, and textual studies as a result of what we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, that both of those statement are false.
The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, in additional to the material found in the first 15 chapters of the book of Acts, comprised an original life story of Jesus undoubtedly written by Matthew. Why Matthew? The oldest, patristic tradition that takes us back to the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century says that Matthew wrote the first gospel and it was written in Hebrew. We’ve always had that. It’s always been extant. But because of the influence of the German school whenever we saw Hebrew immediately scholars said Aramaic in spite of the fact that there is a completely different word in Latin and in Greek for Aramaic as opposed to Hebrew. Undoubtedly this was written by Matthew. The original Hebrew gospel. The language of Jesus was not Aramaic, although he certainly knew Aramaic, but it was not the language in which he taught. It was not Greek although he knew Greek and probably Latin because the people of his day were multilingual. But the language of instruction of Jesus was Hebrew. And the language of the synoptic gospels was Hebrew. What difference does that make? It makes all the difference in the world in understanding many of the things that Jesus has to say. When you come to Jesus and you begin to read the words of Jesus a lot of it is very strange and difficult and hard to understand. For example, not every that saith to me Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. What does he man? Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you cannot see the kingdom of heaven? What does he mean? That’s not too difficult, and we think that we know what that means. The problem is that it’s more dangerous when we think we know what it means than when he says something like, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force.” That’s so confusing that we just forget about that and go on to something else and leave that for later. How about such passages as, “If a man’s eye be single his whole body is filled with light.” What does that mean?
Matthew 6:20: It starts talking about don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Now I want you to listen very carefully to something because it’s going to take me a long time before I answer the question. Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. One question I have to ask you is how do you lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven? How do you do that? Has anybody ever told you? Does anybody know? Jesus told us that that was what we were supposed to do. How many of you have been doing it? How do you do it? If you don’t know how to do it how do you know whether you have any of it or not? Then he goes on to say that the light of the body is the eye. Then he says if a man’s eye be single, clear, pure, good, sound, healthy…there are 8 or 10 translations here. Which one is it? If a man’s eye be what? How many of you have heard messages preached on single mindedness? Having your attention focus on one subject and having that single mindedness and having the mind of Christ….doesn’t have anything to do with that. The translators didn’t have the basic fundamental understanding of a couple of things that are very important for us in our study in understanding the difficult words of Jesus. That is: #1 Jesus was a Jew! #2 He wasn’t just a Jew but he was a Rabbi. WE know just exactly what Jesus did at any one given period in his life to lead him to the point to where he could be called Rabbi.
How many of you have heard all of these crazy little doctrines or theories that have been floating around as to how Jesus, when he was just a young boy, went off into India and there he studied Eastern Mysticism. Whenever he came back he was preaching some very heretical doctrines and teachings to the people of his day. That’s pure stupidity. It’s a basic fundamental lack of understanding of anything Hebraic. The face is that we know exactly what he was doing. How do we know? Because of a number of things that he himself said like, “I did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill the law.” How does one fulfill the law? By keeping it. Not only that he said that he so revered the law that he said that not one jot or one tittle of the law is going to pass away until all of these things be fulfilled. Isn’t that exciting? How do you know? Do you know what a jot is or a tittle? I’ll tell you exactly what he says. Not one yod and not one kotz is what is says in Hebrew is going to pass from the law until these things are fulfilled. Is there anybody here who knows what a kotz is? What’s a yod? The smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Did you ever hear of a kotz? It’s not one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So what is it?
How did he revere the law? He regarded the law that he said not one yod or one kotz was going to pass form the law until it was fulfilled. But who was going to fulfill it? Only he could fulfill it by becoming the embodiment of it which means that in all of his life he lived according to law. We know what law required of the Jewish boy. That’s how we know exactly what he was doing at every point in his life. Do you want to know what he was doing? Go to the Mishnah, and it tells you exactly what he was doing. How old he would be when he was doing whatever he was doing. Everyman’s Talmud is a thumbnail sketch of and Jewish law and commentary on law; the Mishnah is the second law known in Hebrew as the Oral law and they believe that the Oral Law is on par to the written law that was given to Moses at Sinai. In the Mishnah it says that Moses received the Torah, all of the Torah, at Sinai including the Mishnah. So it’s always been considered to be on a part with the written Law (Gen. – Deut.). This is an assembly of a commentary on it and the rabbinical laws regarding Torah. In the Mishnah, it says, “At 5 years the age is reached for the study of scripture (129 -ET); at 10 for the study of Mishnah; at 13 for Bar Mitzvah (when a son becomes a son of the covenant and the responsibilities of law fall on his shoulders. That’s interesting…completely contrary to Christian theology. Once you understand what’s going on all of a sudden you realize that the doctrine of original sin is not Hebraic. Do you know what the doctrine of original sin is? Man was born in sin. He’s born basically evil and from the moment of birth there is that need on the part of man for redemption. That’s the reason why, in Catholicism, if a child is aborted or a miscarriage occurs, it doesn’t matter what age or stage of development that fetus may be in, the nurses who are in attendance in the operating, or delivery, room are instructed as to how they are to open the fetal sack and to administer the right of baptism because baptism is for the forgiveness of sin and the child is born in sin and if it’s not ministered the last rites, or the sacrament of baptism, then it’s going to go to hell. Where did all of that doctrine originate? Not in Judaism. It began with Augustine. It’s called the Augustinian concept of original sin. In Hebrew the man is born basically good and he is what his parents are. That’s the reason that the parents are instructed to teach their children and to bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. When they reach that age of accountability, about the time of puberty, at 12 for the girls and 13 for the boys, then they make that decision that they continue to work with God and the responsibilities for keeping law now falls on their shoulders as opposed to the shoulders of their parents. But until the time that they reach the age of accountability the child is what his parents are. The parents are charged with the responsibility of teaching the children and bringing them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord and then the Bible says when they are old, and it doesn’t mean elderly—it means when they are adolescent or it comes time for them to make the decision for themselves, they’re not going to turn away from it but their simply going to walk on in it.) So at 13, Bar Mitzvah; at 15, the study of Talmud, the commentary on Law; at 18 to the canopy (their eligible for marriage); at 20 then they move into their vocation (did you ever wonder why Jesus did not begin his ministry until the age of 30? Why not 29? Why not 31? If he knew that he was going to have just three years I may just have postponed it until 50. Why 30? Because the Mishnah says at 30 a man moves out into his full vigor. That is the mission and responsibility of whatever it is…into his full vigor. At 40, understanding. At 50, counsel. 60, old age, 70 the hoary head, 80 special strength, 90 bending beneath the weight of one’s age, 100 it’s as if the man is already dead.
It’s all in the Mishnah. If Jesus said that he and every instance fulfilled law, then that means that’s exactly what he was doing at each one of these particular periods in his life because that was what they were supposed to do according to law. Only if he had done that would the members of the Sanhedrin, such as Nicodemus who came to him by night, have come and said, Rabbi, we perceive that you are a Rabbi (teacher) come from God because no one could do the things that you can do unless God is with him. He was a teacher, the teacher par excellent…but very few of us pay any attention to anything that he says.
Let’s take a survey. How you, in your Bible reading in the N.T., concentrate most of your energy in reading in the N.T. in the epistles or you spend most of your time reading in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). How many of you would say that you spend most of your time reading in the epistles? How many of you in your reading in the N.T. spend most of your time reading in the synoptic gospels? (1/10th) It happens every time, everywhere I go and it doesn’t make any difference if there are 400 people or 4000 it’s always the same. The percentage will be anywhere from 75% to 95% of the people spend all of their time, or the majority of their time, reading in the Epistles rather than reading in the Gospels. We’ve never come to the realization to the fact that all of this material in the Epistles was written to a poor bunch of dumb Gentiles who didn’t know anything about spiritual things. They were immoral, they were faithfulness and spiritually immature, they were factional, had all kinds of problems and, yet, most of our theology is constructed on the epistles that Paul wrote to these congregations who had once been Gentiles. By the way, did you know that in the biblical text there are only two classes of people? Those who are a part of the family of God and those who aren’t. Those who are a part of the family of God are called Jews. Those who aren’t are called Gentiles. Gentile means pagan. We talk about Gentile churches. Well, some of them are. More than you would think. But Paul in writing to those who had once been pagan, said, you who were once alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, who were once afar off, have through the blood of Christ been brought nigh. Been brought nigh to what? To Judaism to the commonwealth of Israel. There are the foundations of our faith. Properly understood, we are those wild Olive branches that have been brought from the natural Olive tree. I don’t know about you but I’m not a Protestant. I’m not protesting anything except sin. I’m not a Catholic and don’t care one thing about the ecclesiastical church. I don’t consider myself to be a Gentile. I have no ties, no association with the Gentile theology of the second, third or fourth century. My desire to go all the way behind Protestantism, all the way of Catholicism, all the way back of the Gentile church of the second, third, and fourth century to the historical foundations of my faith and ask myself, “Who were these people? What were they doing? What were they saying? What was the results that they garnered from doing whatever it was that they were doing?? Unfortunately, I can’t do that in a Gentile context. I can’t do that in a Greek context because Jesus wasn’t speaking Greek. He wasn’t speaking English. He was speaking Hebrew and it’s only when we know Hebrew and we hear him speak to us in Hebrew that we’re able to understand what he’s saying. Why? Because he’s a Rabbi and he’s using a rabbinic method of instruction.
