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After his disputes with the local Pharisees even Jesus’s family are not on board with who Jesus is.

Dan: (00:00)
Hi, everyone. And welcome to training for life deemed. I’m your host, Dan, as always, I’m doing this with my father, David Jackson, and really he’s the one doing everything. I’m just asking questions. I’m the, on the tech, behind everything else. today we’re looking at Matthew chapter 12 and we are looking really here Dad there’s gonna be a series of things here happening around the Sabbath. Yeah. With Jesus. So we have, you know, Sabbath questions. We have him being Lord of the Sabbath. and then the Pharisees are gonna have a go in a minute about him being able to cast out demons. And how can he possibly do that if he’s not the king of Beelzebub Yes. So dad, can you just get a start? Let’s start with the Sabbath what’s going on with the Sabbath. Why is it important that all these things are happening around the Sabbath? Why is it such a big thing to be recorded in Matthew?

David: (00:50)
Yeah. So we’ve gotta get the Sabbath in perspective in the creation account. God’s finished his job on the day six day seven. We stop, and the words shabbath in Hebrew doesn’t mean rest. It means stop. So this is the day when you stop work down tools. It it’s a day to walk in the garden, look at your job, enjoy what you’ve done. And God does that with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. and you know, look at what I’ve given you. This is a great blessing in Exodus 31, after taking the Israel out of slavery, where they’ve worked, under the burden, the yolk of slavery for seven days a week, he restores their access to having a day off. And he says to them in Exodus 31, this is the sign of the covenant between me and you. This is my covenant with you, that you will have your, shabbath, your stop work days.

David: (01:53)
and it’s not just Saturday. It’s, you know, the, the three festivals in the year, their Sabbaths, some of them go for a whole week. the first day of the month is a new moon. That’s a Sabbath. it’s a stop work day. So you’ve got all these times when God gives you stop work, let’s sit down together, have a meal together, be God’s forever family and enjoy the blessings. God showered on you and sing some songs and be thankful and that sort of thing. So here’s our family time. And there’s our work time. Now, when the Pharisees looked at that, they they look at that and they go, okay, we’ve, we’ve sinned against God. We’ve broken his covenant. So the only way back to God is to keep the covenant. That means we’ve gotta go back through the old Testament, look at what God expects us to do.

David: (02:45)
And we’ve gotta make a list of what we’ve gotta do. And then we’ve gotta do it. And on that list, the Sabbath is a biggie because the Sabbath is, is a gift only to God’s people. It’s not a gift for the Gentiles. So in Exodus 31, you get to keep the Sabbath they’re under the burden. So if we are the family of God, keeping the Sabbath tells all the Gentiles, we are better than they are. So we’re gonna do the Sabbath. Like we, we are, God’s chosen people and you are not mm-hmm . So how many ways can we make sure we keep the Sabbath and show everybody how good we are? How pious we are, how religious we are. So they go nuts making rules about the Sabbath. I’ll give you my favorite one. Apart from the fact that they’ve measured, how big a load can you lift on the Sabbath? And the answer is an egg . Anything heavier than an egg is work. Therefore, you can’t do it on the Sabbath, on the Sabbath. Can you get dressed? Yes, I can pick up my clothes, put my clothes on that’s not work. Okay. is cleaning your room work.

Dan: (03:55)
Cool. work. Of course it is. Of course,

David: (03:56)
Its of course it’s. So if you have got up in the morning and you’ve got dressed and you put ribbons in your hair, that’s getting dressed. If the ribbon falls out of your hair,

Dan: (04:08)
You can’t pick it up. You

David: (04:09)
Can’t pick it up. Cause that’s work. Cause that’s cleaning up your room. and they’ve got rules for all of this stuff and it it’s huge. It fills a whole section of the Mishnah like this. So Jesus comes along and he just ignores all that. This is about stopping work. This is about enjoying the blessings. God give you. And what are we doing on the Sabbath? Well, we’re in town. It’s Capernaum and you know, we’re a wandering pack of people like David we’re exiles, virtually homeless. Why are we out in the fields, eating grain?

Dan: (04:46)
Cause God said to leave the edges of your field for the people who are poor so they can walk through and harvest their grain

David: (04:52)
Might have something to do with nobody else has offered them hospitality. you know, you you’ve been walking around, spreading the gospel and preaching and teaching the Bible and you’re hungry. Where’s the hospitality.

Dan: (05:06)
Well, it’s the Sabbath. I can’t cook extra food for you.

David: (05:09)
so here we are. We are waiting for the synagogue meeting to take place. It’s you know, we’re out wandering around in the paddock, pulling a few grains of wheat off and having a bit of a munch. And that broke all the rabbis rules. Therefore, you can’t be the Messiah, therefore you deserve to die. And we’ve, we’ve got the data. Now we can go to court. It’s just, you, you look at what Jesus came to do when you look at their way of getting saved. Talk about the burden and the yoke.

Dan: (05:37)
Yeah. Okay. So we then come to the point where the Pharisees are gonna completely accuse Jesus of basically being Satan or the king of the devils, because he’s gonna heal people and cast out demons and they say, how can this man do this? The only way he can do this? Cause he he’s Beelzebub basically is what he says. Isn’t it about the rule of the demons?

David: (06:00)
You, you gotta look at that and go, how desperate are you to explain Jesus away? You’re gonna see this all the way through the gospels. You can see it in acts. You know, here’s a blind man, born blind, standing there healed of his blindness. And you are gonna say that the guy that did that is an enemy of God. All the prophecy says, if he’s doing that, Yahweh has come to save you chapter 11. But now if he actually does it, and that contradicts all your rules that you’ve made up, what’s your explanation. Well the only other power that would be equal to do something like that must be the devil. So gee, where Jesus must be working for the devil. Otherwise we’d have to throw all our rules in the bin and we can’t do that. Yeah. So we’re making up these absurd, explanations for who Jesus is. I mean, you’ll see the same thing in our culture with conspiracy theories. you know, that explains all the things that mean that I don’t have to change my worldview. I don’t have to change my attitude or lifestyle. I can hang onto my sin. but I’m gonna make up that this, these stories about, you know, satanic culture in charge of the world. well

Dan: (07:17)
Lizards,

David: (07:18)
Oh look honestly. So this is how desperate the Pharisees have become.

Dan: (07:24)
Okay, well, Jesus, isn’t gonna roll into talking about a sin that can’t be forgiven, which is bla me against the holy spirit. Yes. Do you wanna elaborate on that at all? For us? remember, we’re trying to keep this short

David: (07:38)
. Yeah. Well blasphemy simply means verbal abuse. So blasphemy, isn’t saying the word God in the wrong context, blasphemy is verbally abusing someone and it doesn’t have to be God, you, you can blaspheme your next door neighbor. You can blaspheme your kids. If you verbally abuse. ’em that’s a sin, but if you want to blasphemye the holy spirit, why the holy spirit? Well, if you’re verbally abusing Jesus as the son of man, you dunno who he is, you dunno what you’re talking about. you know, God forgive them. They dunno what they’re doing. But if the holy spirit is going to work to bring you new life, to, to open the gospel to you, to do all these things, if you’ve had some experience of that and you tell him to rack off, that’s a whole different story.

David: (08:26)
And so over in Hebrew, six, Hebrews 10, we are told about the people who have made a profession of faith come into the body of Christ, experienced the things that go on in the body of Christ. And then tell God to go jump, jump in a the lake and walk away at that point. There’s nothing the church can do. We’ve told ’em the whole story. We’ve confronted them with their sin. They’ve made their decision. No, don’t nag them. Don’t nag them. Let ’em go. Let the holy spirit deal with it. And if that’s where they end up, that’s there’s no, no forgiveness for that.

Dan: (09:04)
Yeah. Okay. So blasphemy being the use of words to assault something, to then roll into the next section, which is all about you being known by the words that come out

David: (09:18)
Of your mouth

Dan: (09:19)
To actually know what’s inside you. Yeah. there’s an element there too, where you can always say, well, if your words coming out are not in line with the spirit, you know, if you’re like now with the kingdom coming, if you are filled with the spirit, then the words that you speak should be filled of the spirit. Right. And even just the fact that spirit means wind I’ll think it’s great. Yeah.

David: (09:38)
or mood or yeah. That’s

Dan: (09:40)
Yeah. Yeah. So I think this flows, well then first to be talking about, you know, this, I don’t think it will seem being for you to be verbally abusing someone. And then the next thing Jesus is, you know, the words that you use or you choose to use actually revealing what’s inside you. Yeah.

David: (09:55)
Yeah. They, they say a lot. I it’s a sad thing. I had a conversation many years ago with, Robert Gordon who was the head of Oriental studies at Cambridge university, he’s, an old Testament scholar. And one of the things that bothered him was that a whole bunch of people he knew had come to Cambridge to study the old Testament. They were believers. They were, you know, mostly brethren assembly people and they don’t have a tradition of a theological college. So they would go from a BA in Hebrew, straight to Cambridge and do a PhD in old Testament. And they’d find themselves under the tutelage of people who rubbish the old Testament, not all of the Cambridge guys do, but you know, some of them are pretty feral and some are in the process. They lose their faith. And when they lose their faith, they become really Anti God and anti the Bible.

David: (10:45)
And I could name a few names of old Testament scholars. Who’ve done that. David Clines would be the one that most comes to mind. He’s a Sydney boy. And when he talks about God, now he talks about God as the cosmic bully. he is, he’s come from a position of saying he was a believer to being in a position now where he really verbally abuses God. and so that change in attitude, the change that that’s inside, just explodes in, in this bitterness and rage and it’s blasphemy. Hmm. and we see that happening with people. Sometimes who’ve walked away. And so what other words coming out of our mouth? What do we say? When things go bad and you know, we don’t understand what God’s doing. Do we verbally abuse God? Or do we have, you know, where are we with this? And I think Jesus is saying, you need to keep your eye on Christ need, keep your eye on Jesus on God’s sovereignty and everything. And not just be focusing on self and holding God accountable to me. That’s, that’s the reverse polarity. So yeah. Watch your mouth, watch your heart.

Dan: (12:03)
As the chapter continues here, dad, we’re gonna go into the Pharisees and the scribes asking Jesus for signs. And obviously when you ask for a sign, you generally don’t get one .

Dan: (12:15)
You should just be looking at those ones that are already there. But, they, they wanna specific sign. They want Jesus to do something just for them. which, you know, Jesus generally refuses to do. Why, why wouldn’t Jesus do it? Like , he’s done so many. Like if they, if I think if the scribes had to come up and had a sick guy and they say, can you heal this guy? He probably would’ve done it, but because they’ve come and said, we wanna see a sign. What sign can you show us to prove who you are?

David: (12:44)
Doesn’t it take the breath away. Jesus has spent nearly two years at this point, wandering around Galilee and the crowds are coming in their thousands because he heals every sick person they bring to him. I mean, what, what more sign do you want? The, like I say, the equivalent of Jesus, walking into Nepean hospital and emptying the place, everybody walking out healed, you know? And, and you finish doing that in the neighbourhood where these guys are living and ministering and teaching the Bible and they come up to him and say, oh, can you do something to prove that you’re the Messiah? And you go fellas, you know, open your winkers here, have a look around. Mm, John, the Baptist disciples could see the signs. You’re supposed to be the big Bible teachers. What’s the point of doing another one? You haven’t looked at the ones I already did.

Dan: (13:37)
Yep. We’re then gonna move on from scribe and Pharisees who have issues to his own family who come to try and wrangle him and get him under control. Cause he’s crazy or whatever, whatever word he’s used in this particular one in Matthew.

David: (13:53)
Oh

Dan: (13:53)
Yes. She’s gonna transition that to, you know, the people who do the will of God, his brothers and sisters and et cetera. Yeah. It’s, it’s nice to hear, but

David: (14:06)
isn’t this, this is the hard part. Jesus’ family lives in capernaum They’ve only just moved there when Jesus started his ministry. So he’s got four what’s. He got four brothers. Is it four or six? I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I can’t remember four of them anyway, that I, I can name and they’re married. They’ve got families. Mary’s there. I think Joseph is off the scene. Looks like he’s dead and gone. And here they are living in capernaum and eldest son becomes this great celebrity and there’s crowds following him. And he’s teaching all this stuff and all the religious authorities in town that you grew up with that, you know, your, your local minister, your rabbi, all these fellas, they think your son’s a nut job. They think he’s working for the devil. So as a family, what do you do? You know, you roll up at the local synagogue and you say, can we get him out of there? let’s go and talk to him. You know, you four boys go and get your brother. this sort of thing. And you go, hang on a minute. They don’t get it. Yeah. They grew up with him and they don’t get it.

Dan: (15:16)
Well, just don’t get it. I mean, in John, they try and send him off to die. Like like, oh, it’s, shouldn’t you be down at this big festival. Shouldn’t you go down there? Know that they’re trying to kill him down.

David: (15:27)
There’s such a famous big shot. They all down there waiting to crucify you, you know, what are you doing up here? Talking to us, get down there and get dead, you know? Thank you brothers. Yeah. I think I love that story because when Jesus rises from the dead, one of the first things he says to Mary Magdalene is go and tell the brothers. And I don’t think he’s talking about his bro, the brothers in Christ. I think he’s talking about his brothers, his family, and the next thing you know, he visibly, he appears to James. Now James becomes the most godly pious leader of the church in Jerusalem. Why? Because this is the brother who said, go get killed. And he did. And mum watched it happen. And then Jesus turns up to James and says, Hey bro, I’m back. Yeah. Well wouldn’t you be on your face going, ah, you know, the repentance, the depth of what happens to him. So these, this family are on their own little process of figuring out who Jesus, their brother, their son is. So it’s, it’s not like these people sort of have all got halos around their head and they all understand it. They’re part of the process. and I love the way Jesus nails it. Who is my family, my family, my forever family is everyone who puts their faith in me.

Dan: (16:56)
Oh, now that brings us to the end of chapter 12. That’s the end of this episode. If you would like to come grab the study notes to go along with Matthew and this section of Matthew, please head over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/ 71. If you enjoy this episode, we’d love for you to leave us a review on the podcast and please make sure that you hit the subscribe button, come back and join us again. Next week as we go into Matthew chapter 13,