Do Jesus’ Teachings Conflict With Old Testament Violence? -- Sermon on the Mount Q+R 3
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- Опубликовано: 12 апр 2025
- Sermon on the Mount Q+R 3 (E25) - What does Jesus mean when he describes people entering the Kingdom of the skies? Are the promises in the Beatitudes possible now, or do we need to wait for the new creation? How did Jesus respond to other perspectives on how to treat our enemies? How do we reconcile Jesus’ teachings on creative nonviolence with violence in the Old Testament narratives? Why does Jesus tell his followers to be perfect when the Bible repeatedly mentions that all humans fail? In this episode, Tim and Jon respond to your questions from episodes 15-22 in the Sermon on the Mount series. Thank you to our audience for your thoughtful questions!
Show Music:
Original Sermon on the Mount music by Richie Kohen
BibleProject theme song by TENTS
Show Credit:
Jon Collins is the creative producer for today’s show, and Tim Mackie is the lead scholar. Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer; Cooper Peltz, managing producer; Colin Wilson, producer; Stephanie Tam, consultant and editor. Aaron Olsen edited today's episode and also provided our sound design and mix. Tyler Bailey was supervising engineer. Nina Simone does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Christopher Maier compiles our audience questions.
may we worship and love our Lord as He continues to make us complete!
"... Jesus will meet you in your story and give you wisdom ..." - beautiful!
So good guys. 👍🏼
Yes, flesh and blood is not our enemy! "Redirected energy" - good one!
I believe two good resources providing more context are Francis Schaeffer “ A Christian Manifesto” and C S Lewis “The Weight of Glory”. Your podcasts and videos are a great blessing. I offer of continual prayers for you and Sam.
Be perfect as your Father is perfect = we can be PERFECT IN LOVE here on earth 🌎 as the hymn explains it.. we are made complete as we reflect back the Love of God thru The Messiah. Salamat, Bible Project! Pagpapala mula sa Pinas 🇵🇭 !
So good!
So important!
God is the giver of life and he has the responsibility of all judgment & justice so it seems that we agree with that until it comes down to how he fulfills that in our own lives and the ones we love.
Since the harsh reality seems to be that we all deserve punishment, we are ignoring that idea for much of our day. We have self protection and fear of death that is cloaking us against that reality of deserving punishment in light of a pure, perfect & loving God.
So we need to see the revealed truths in the biblical story and how that Perfect God has made a way for us to be rescued from not just the punishment we deserve but from the power of evil over our lives!
You guys always have such beautiful honest conversations and interactions with these questions we all have.
So thankful for Ray’s influences and how God leads you to teach and share your own wrestlings in such an approachable way.
Blessings from Haiti!
33:32 such a great response about divine judgement or violence. God implicating Himself to a people. The Lord said He would have driving out the inhabitants of the promised land with hornets, but in man’s relationship with the Lord we ruined that prospect and determined things to be resolved with by violence
I truly enjoyed this Bible Study.
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James 1:4 "And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing." We are made complete in Christ - Colossians 2:10
Thankyou bible project always looking forward to listening to your bible teachings and interpretations in your podcasts and the sermon on the mount series was brilliant 🥰
Thank you guys for your amazing work! Keep it up!
I just thought I'd tell you guys that I appreciate the Podcast. I use Podbean on my Android phone so that I can listen to them continuously in series, so just thought I'd tell you since that method probably doesn't get captured adequately in terms of listener numbers for you. I see where you post it here on RUclips, then I'm alerted to listen to it, then I move over to my Podbean app to listen to it, but 'like' the video here. Since I try to capture what I read/listen to within The Bible Project app, I then move over that way and mark it as played so I can keep track. I've been loving the Sermon on the Mount series. So important! I love how you are 'foils' for each other during these discussions too. You guys exploring various topics using common misperceptions/attitudes/ideas and framing them as your own even when they aren't... is very Paulinian and cool.
I'm looking forward to more classes as you offer them as well. The set of classes you have up now have all been such a blessing. I never get tired of hearing you guys.
Thanks for all you do! I hope you have a wonderful week. ❤
to the first question I would apply 1Corinthians 13:9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. (we see the kingdom now and partially in the "to come")
Really beautiful perspectives here. Thank you.
Thank you for your kind words! We appreciate you and your encouragement.
One thing that's very important to understand, which I learned by reading through the Old Testament from front to back for myself, is that very early on God sets the stage for what he considers righteous and holy, and he also wants to keep away anything that would cause his people to stumble and fog and become led into temptation to sin, from his people! And so, what we see is that whenever there is a neighboring people. Dad lives in a way which is satanic and unholy, he tells his own people not to mix with them because they will be tempted to turn away from God! But these were also God's chosen people whom he was teaching to be righteous by helping them to understand how to live in his ways by giving them his Commandments or his laws! And if there was something that would cause them to stumble and fall away from him and all of the goodness and abundance that he was providing them, then he wanted to destroy those things and take them out of the Earth, so that they would not fall! So his violence became a protective mechanism! Because the Lord God hates things which are unholy! And when we realize that it's not violence just to be violence, But rather, he was protecting his children, we can see it like a parent trying to kill a swarm of hornets so their child won't go outside and play and get stung!
But the Lord also said to any of those people who believed in him from outside Nations, or from gentile tribes... That if they were to follow in the ways of his people, come and follow after me says Jesus... Then he would integrate them into the Israeli tribes! And they would become one with his people! But those people had to become like his people in their righteous ways! And this is the same as the parables of the grafting of the vines from the gentile Nations into the nations of Israel all throughout the end of times! We do not take our ways and expect God to adhere to them! It's the other way around! We turn to God's ways, his chosen holy ways of righteousness, and we follow after Christ by choosing him And those righteous ways which are worthy of being in Eden!
But I think one other thing to consider here when considering the violence of the Old Testament and the Non-Violence of the New Testament, Is that perhaps Jesus is contending with a slightly different group of people! Because the Lord God constantly sends his disciples out to those areas where peoples hearts may be softened toward him and they may be converting their heart to Christ and the Lord, God's ways! And so the Lord is appealing to the heart of gentiles in new ways! But Then what he says is for them to leave those areas behind which are completely hard of heart and would not hear the gospel. And this is a little like the Old Testament. If we compare this to the Old Testament, what we see is that time and time again, it mentions that there was a hardness of the heart of Israelites, there was a hardness of the hearts of other tribes, and everyone who they battled did not normally turn their hearts to God once they understood who the Lord was, but they continued to worship their other gods! Gods! But in the New Testament, we see that there's a new generation of people who do not always turn back to the other gods and worshiping idols! Instead, there is a generation of people who start to turn toward the god of Israel and love him with all their hearts! So God knows that there's a generation of people who are willing to be saved and come to him, unlike in the past! Because the tribes of people of old, did not ever come to God and just in a wave of conversion like stories, start following after him! Their hearts were two enthralled with their idols! And God knew this! So I think this measure of newfound Mercy, is not new. God knows the hearts of all people! And he knew that in the past, people were not allowing their hearts to be soft and in love, and they were not choosing him! In fact, even amongst the Israelites, his very own people, they become further and further away from him!
And they become further and further away from him, regardless of how hard he tries over and over again to love them and share his mercies and faithful love to them! Because the Lord God does this every single time. And if you look at it that way, that humans were evil first, and did not choose the Lord God and his ways and his own loving ways amongst themselves and turn their hearts toward him... Then you'll see that God is not a god of wrathfulness in the Bible. He was a god of pure love who is trying to be amongst people who were unholy! And that makes a huge difference because you cannot have unholiness in the presence of the Lord! But they did not want to choose him! He wanted to choose them! And there were those of the Israelites who wanted to choose him and that is the only reason why he continued to reach out to them because whenever they would truly turn their hearts to him, he would allow the fullness of his love and mercy to shine upon them! But that was his hope in the world. At that time! He needed to maintain a presence in the world and he wanted to be amongst his people at all times! He tried so very, very hard! If you truly read the Old Testament from the heart, in order to understand God and his ways, you will see the Old Testament, the Torah, especially, is the most loving book of all! God struggles with humans, time and time again, regardless of our unlove toward him and toward other human beings. He tries and tries and tries to reach us at the depth of our hearts by providing, giving us signs and wonders and miracles... By loving us unconditionally. And his responses in those scenarios were to protect his children to the furthest extent possible, until they had completely turned away from him.
Our US church has a presence and friends in Myanmar. Please pray for their country.
I wanted to attempt to add more insight on what it means to be 'perfect' like God. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says, 'You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.' How can we better understand this?
Think of it like a puzzle. God's perfection is like a complete puzzle, with all the pieces fitting together perfectly. Our 'perfection' is like a puzzle that's still being worked on - we're constantly growing, learning, and becoming more like Christ.
Another way to think about it is like a tree. God's perfection is like a mature tree, fully grown and bearing fruit. Our 'perfection' is like a seedling that's still growing and developing, but has the potential to become a strong and fruitful tree.
As 2 Corinthians 7:1 says, '...let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.' It's a journey of growth, transformation, and surrender to God's work in us.
I hope this helps!
On the topic of violent vs. nonviolent policy on the national level, I think the US's international recovery efforts after WW2 are a powerful example of what far reaching nonviolent policies can achieve. Those efforts successfully flipped nations that were once bitter enemies (Japan and Germany) into great allies only decades later, and a lot of where Europe is today wouldn't be possible without the Marshall Plan.
Concerning violence in the Old Testament and how it relates to violence today, I think the best way to address it is to understand that God's instruction in the OT is sort of a "training wheels" version of instruction meant to come later. To put it another way, God respects human agency and makes compromises to work within whatever human capacity or willingness is available. For example, the 10 Commandments are basically the greatest commandment (love God and love others), just restated in a way that holds your hand by spelling out how living that out looks in several common interpersonal relationships. Another example is the guidelines he provided for divorce. It's not part of his ideal plan, but he made provisions for minimizing the damage divorce would do because humans just don't have the willingness to follow that ideal plan, expressed as their "hardness of heart." I believe God is willing to make such provisions, because setting aside smaller stumbling blocks (divorce, polygamy, violence, etc.) gives us room to better tackle more foundational issues first like the overall posture of our heart (see the life of David).
Back to violence directed by God in the OT, I think the best way to then explain it is: Human civilization at the time was incredibly violent, one example being some of Israel's neighbors regularly practicing the sacrifice of their own children. Completely upending this widespread violence was not within the capacity of any human civilization at the time, so God took the reigns in redirecting some of it to achieve something more productive in the long run, eliminating or dispersing cultures on unrecoverable trajectories and setting the stage for better things to come later. That standard for violence is not something we should aspire to now. It's something we're supposed to "graduate" past needing.
Of course, this is all written by someone with the luxury of living where violence is extremely rare. "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." If a civil war was threatening those I cared about, I'm not sure I could stay out of the violence, but I think there's always room to follow God's example and push for provisions that get us closer to what's ideal. For instance, never take part in cycles of revenge, always attempt to open dialogue with your enemy, and never be afraid to be emotionally vulnerable and express your shared humanity with them.
I think it may be a mistake to think of the biblical account as a linear narrative of God's relationship with mankind rather than a fleshing-out of mankind by God over time through the cross of Christ where human violence and God's glory are delineated.
Absolutely, think of some of God's characteristics and nature. He is patient. It means he meets us where we are, but the goal was always to lead us to Jesus. There is so many analogies Jesus uses about this, with farming, gardening etc. We plant seeds, we tend to the soil and slowly create a lavish and robust garden. We have the power of hindsight, but we need to understand that he was meeting his ancient people where they were, just as he meets us where we are. The plan and goal is always Jesus.
31:38 Abraham was honestly afraid for his & Sarah’s life, he was entering into leviathan’s home!
Abraham’s life story is a prophetic foreshadowing of what would happen to the tribes of Israel. Sarah represents the Church, God’s true followers, and Abraham represents her husband, Messiah. When he enters Egypt, it represents the diaspora.
The Lord Jesus used the exact same apocalyptic imagery as He did as The Eternal Son speaking in the Old Testament when speaking of His soon coming judgment on unrepentant Jerusalem. He brought destruction in the exact same way as He did in OT, the Roman armies were His locusts and so on in Revelation just like the Babylonians and Assyrians were. He brought three waves of destruction via human military presence and described them as His own “coming in the clouds”. In 66 AD to 70 AD Jesus’s prophecy on The Mount of Olives of coming war and famine came to pass. Jesus most definitely was the same in New Testament as Old Testament.
The Book of Matthew, Chapter 5 and Verse 17.
If you want to know if Jesus (Yahawashi) is in conflict with the Old Testament, ask an Israelite.
We know the Bible. Enjoy your answer, because if you are a Christian you cannot eat pork, just because the Romans said you can.
The covenant wasn't made with Romans or Greeks yet so many Christians like to refer to the Greek but always avoid their own history when it comes to their Godly treatment of the Biblical Israelites.
Uhm wow tunnel vision