Jesus makes two points to underscore that he’s not here to dismantle the Torah, because Jesus views the Torah as so valuable, here’s how he would describe its divine authority, not one little tiny detail, the little squiggles of Hebrew letters, this got translated in King James as jot and title, the dotting of the i’s in English or the crossing of the t’s. What Jesus says in Matthew 5:18 is not just the little squiggles will pass away from the Torah, he says until the sky and the land pass on, not one squiggle will pass on from the Torah until all things have taken place. There’s a familiar way of talking about the enduring eternal nature of God’s Word that occurs in the prophets and the Psalms, where we compare God’s nature to the most reliable eternal stable thing, what’s more reliable than the stable ordered world, the one who generated that stable ordered world.
Psalm 148:5,6, let the skies praise the name of Yahweh, for at his command they were created, he established them forever and ever, he issued a decree that will never pass away. So here in poetic imagery, the skies are eternal, but Jesus just said, until the skies and the land pass away, so is this contradiction in the Bible? There’s different ways of making the same point, but in Psalm chapter 48, why are the skies always the same, the stars follow the same course at God’s command. So what really is the eternal thing, the command. The command, God issued a decree that will never pass away, so behind the order of creation is a mind and a will that speaks a word.
Psalm 102:25, in the beginning, you laid the foundations of the land, the skies are the work of your hands, they might perish, but you will remain, they will wear out like a garment. Like clothing, you change the skies in the land and they will be discarded, but you remain the same, your years will never end. Here it’s saying, the skies and the land are God’s handiwork, they’re different than God. God’s eternal and here creation is talked about as constantly changing. Psalm chapter 148, the skies are eternal, which point ultimately not to the sky’s eternal nature, but God’s eternal nature. But here, the skies and the land are constantly changing in Psalm chapter 102 and so biblical authors in Jewish literature, they can use the regularity or the changing nature of creation to make the same point, it points to someone greater who doesn’t change, this is the point that Jesus is making here.
Jesus goes on to say, I’m going to go on and teach you how to do the commands and he says, therefore, whoever undoes even the littlest command in the Torah, you won’t get in the Kingdom of Heaven. The point that Jesus is making here, the sky and the land are stable, the more stable is the command and that command is what he’s come to fill full and he goes on to say, therefore, what I’m going to go on and teach you is how to do the commands, he says therefore, whoever undoes even the littlest command in the Torah, you won’t get in the Kingdom of Heaven. So Jesus at this point, he realizes that there’s disagreements on how to fulfill or how to follow the commands, but it’s not so simple, everyone had their own collection, matrices or interpretations of how to fulfill all these commands. There was a debate going on in Jesus’ day, in Jewish literature from the same time period and from later, the literature of the rabbis, even though it was written down centuries after Jesus, a lot of it records debates from Jesus’ time.
What’s the most important command, what are the greater commands, what are the lesser commands, Jesus will lay into the Pharisees in chapter 23 by saying, look, you’ve developed all of these new sub rules about how to give to God a 10th of the herbs of your garden. There nothing in the Torah about that, but there’s tax collectors and sex workers who would be open to learning how to be faithful to the God of Israel, if they would create a community that would welcome them in and Jesus calls that the greater things, mercy and justice and love, these are the greater commands in comparison to what he calls the lesser commands. To call commands greater or lesser is not evaluating them necessarily on whether or not they are important, some are more basic and get to the heart of things, some are more specific applications of the core.
What Jesus is acknowledging is what every Rabbi in his day acknowledged, there are some commands of the Torah that are the core, but what people disagreed about is, what the core was and then how they apply that core. Jesus is simply saying, I’m not here to dismantle the Torah, I’m here to fulfill what God’s will in the Torah was always about in the first place. Here’s how much I value it, I think it’s eternal and I’m teaching my followers to live by the commands of the Torah and I’m here to teach people how to fulfill the lesser and the greater commands of the Torah. What Jesus hasn’t said yet, is what he thinks the core is, Jesus’ offering the conclusions of something that he hasn’t said yet to put listeners at ease, if anybody’s nervous that he is going to be like one of these Jewish groups that are on the scene saying, I’ve got a new way forward and those laws of the Torah are outmoded, they don’t have any wisdom to offer us anymore, there were people saying that and Jesus is setting himself apart from that, he’s trying to put his listeners at ease, but what he isn’t saying yet is, what are the least of the commands.
Psalm 148:5,6, let the skies praise the name of Yahweh, for at his command they were created, he established them forever and ever, he issued a decree that will never pass away. So here in poetic imagery, the skies are eternal, but Jesus just said, until the skies and the land pass away, so is this contradiction in the Bible? There’s different ways of making the same point, but in Psalm chapter 48, why are the skies always the same, the stars follow the same course at God’s command. So what really is the eternal thing, the command. The command, God issued a decree that will never pass away, so behind the order of creation is a mind and a will that speaks a word.
Psalm 102:25, in the beginning, you laid the foundations of the land, the skies are the work of your hands, they might perish, but you will remain, they will wear out like a garment. Like clothing, you change the skies in the land and they will be discarded, but you remain the same, your years will never end. Here it’s saying, the skies and the land are God’s handiwork, they’re different than God. God’s eternal and here creation is talked about as constantly changing. Psalm chapter 148, the skies are eternal, which point ultimately not to the sky’s eternal nature, but God’s eternal nature. But here, the skies and the land are constantly changing in Psalm chapter 102 and so biblical authors in Jewish literature, they can use the regularity or the changing nature of creation to make the same point, it points to someone greater who doesn’t change, this is the point that Jesus is making here.
Jesus goes on to say, I’m going to go on and teach you how to do the commands and he says, therefore, whoever undoes even the littlest command in the Torah, you won’t get in the Kingdom of Heaven. The point that Jesus is making here, the sky and the land are stable, the more stable is the command and that command is what he’s come to fill full and he goes on to say, therefore, what I’m going to go on and teach you is how to do the commands, he says therefore, whoever undoes even the littlest command in the Torah, you won’t get in the Kingdom of Heaven. So Jesus at this point, he realizes that there’s disagreements on how to fulfill or how to follow the commands, but it’s not so simple, everyone had their own collection, matrices or interpretations of how to fulfill all these commands. There was a debate going on in Jesus’ day, in Jewish literature from the same time period and from later, the literature of the rabbis, even though it was written down centuries after Jesus, a lot of it records debates from Jesus’ time.
What’s the most important command, what are the greater commands, what are the lesser commands, Jesus will lay into the Pharisees in chapter 23 by saying, look, you’ve developed all of these new sub rules about how to give to God a 10th of the herbs of your garden. There nothing in the Torah about that, but there’s tax collectors and sex workers who would be open to learning how to be faithful to the God of Israel, if they would create a community that would welcome them in and Jesus calls that the greater things, mercy and justice and love, these are the greater commands in comparison to what he calls the lesser commands. To call commands greater or lesser is not evaluating them necessarily on whether or not they are important, some are more basic and get to the heart of things, some are more specific applications of the core.
What Jesus is acknowledging is what every Rabbi in his day acknowledged, there are some commands of the Torah that are the core, but what people disagreed about is, what the core was and then how they apply that core. Jesus is simply saying, I’m not here to dismantle the Torah, I’m here to fulfill what God’s will in the Torah was always about in the first place. Here’s how much I value it, I think it’s eternal and I’m teaching my followers to live by the commands of the Torah and I’m here to teach people how to fulfill the lesser and the greater commands of the Torah. What Jesus hasn’t said yet, is what he thinks the core is, Jesus’ offering the conclusions of something that he hasn’t said yet to put listeners at ease, if anybody’s nervous that he is going to be like one of these Jewish groups that are on the scene saying, I’ve got a new way forward and those laws of the Torah are outmoded, they don’t have any wisdom to offer us anymore, there were people saying that and Jesus is setting himself apart from that, he’s trying to put his listeners at ease, but what he isn’t saying yet is, what are the least of the commands.
