Chris, how do you reconcile Jesus' teachings in Matthew 5 that whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
With the apostles' instructions, so we're reconciling that with this, with the apostles' instructions in Acts 15, that Gentile believers only need to abstain from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from things strangled and from blood. For example, how do you biblically reconcile Jesus teaching that He is the Lord of the Sabbath and it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath with the absence of any command on this matter from the Jerusalem Council.
They also didn't specify not to murder, steal, or envy. Thank you. Okay, so I grouped this one with Terry's question because they were somewhat similar in nature. And again, like I say, this is a big thing today. It's a growing, it's been a growing movement for a number of decades. And so these are sincere questions. And Terry, I hope you didn't take my answer as a rebuke or anything like that. I'm reading Paul's words. Paul writes pretty strongly. So that wasn't me trying to put you down for asking the question.
I appreciated that you did. That's what this is for to ask questions. Okay, so my first thought was to just say, look, get the commentary I wrote on Matthew, because I talk about that at length about Matthew 5, whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments. But I'm not trying to plug my book. But if you do have the ability to get that and read that, I answered in more depth there with a lot of quotations.
And basically what I point out there is, well, first of all, let me just read the passage because you need the context of when he says," Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments." And I misunderstood this, I would say, pretty much my whole life until I was working on the Matthew commentary. When I say I misunderstood it, I just didn't try to explain it because I didn't know what it meant. I just, you know, I just made sure I wasn't in a position where I had to discuss it.
Jesus said," Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law until all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
So what you have in the Sermon on the Mount, and this is all from the early church, is a repeat on a much grander scale of what you had at Sinai. In Sinai, Moses gave the law, or it was given to Moses by God and distributed from Moses to the people of Israel. The Mosaic Law was given, okay? So it's for that reason Jesus goes up on a mountain to give His legislation. And we know it as the Sermon on the Mount. And this and the rest of His teaching replaces the Law of Moses.
So that's why Jesus starts off saying, look, I'm not desecrating the law, that I didn't come to destroy it. I came to fulfill it. Now, fulfill has several meanings. And as the early Christians, the Greek word that Jesus uses, or that's used there in Matthew, the early Christians explain that fulfill means, and I had some quotes, but I think I left them at home, to fill up.
So a lot of the requirements in the law were incomplete, like not commit adultery, but there was no law forbidding lusting after somebody, committing adultery in your heart. Or don't murder someone, but there was no law against hating in your heart. You were not going to get punished just for hating and so on. So Jesus fulfills. He fills it full. He takes the Mosaic law and he covers things that are the root of sin. And so it's a more complete law.
At the same time, there are many commandments in the Mosaic Law that were just temporary. They were never intended to be permanent. They were never intended to apply to anyone but the Jews. I mean, the law was only given to the Jews to start with. And those were fulfilled and that they were finished with Jesus. When he came and explained that the entire law turns on loving God the Father with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
Yet this fulfilled the whole law, those two. And then so much of Jesus' teaching is explaining how love operates and what it involves. So Jesus isn't talking about the Mosaic Law, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments. He's talking about His teachings, His new legislation, whoever breaks the least of these commandments will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, which the early Christians understood that expression to mean you're not going to be in the kingdom of heaven.
In other words, you've been designated least with regard to the kingdom of heaven. You don't merit being in it. You're not acceptable as a citizen of God's kingdom. Okay, so that's why Acts 15 makes perfect sense because Jesus, and again, he said the law and the prophets were until John. So the law was finished. But a lot of the Jewish Christians were having a difficult time. I mean, the law had been around for 1,500 years. This is how God had always worked with His people.
And so Jewish Christians, they had no trouble believing in Christ. And they even accepted Gentiles being able to be Christians, but surely they have to live by the law. So that's why you have the Jerusalem Council that's described in Acts 15. But it's interesting the statute or commandment that they laid down, the apostolic decree, doesn't have anything in it that is simply in the Mosaic Law.
In other words, they bypass the Mosaic Law entirely and they go back to the pre-Mosaic period, the laws that were in play there. They mentioned idolatry. So men like Noah, if we go back to him, okay, he did not, he served the true God. He didn't worship idols. Men like Abraham, you know, a thousand years later or so, they didn't worship idols. He mentions immorality. That was what was going on on the earth before the flood. So you have strict teachings on morality for God's people with Noah, and then blood.
That law was given to Noah, that it's okay to eat animals for food, but not their blood, because the life is in the blood. And that's, you know, go back in the passage in Genesis, and you can read that. It's right after Noah offers the sacrifices and God makes the covenant, the rainbow covenant with Noah. So these things prohibited in Acts 15, these were given to all mankind because they were laws that were binding on Noah and his descendants.
So the Gentiles were always bound to do those things, but they had gotten away from them. And the apostles are calling to mind, look, all of those apply. But they don't bring up anything that is only in the law that was not also a law before Moses came upon the earth. Okay, and then you asked about Jesus said He was the Lord of the Sabbath. Well, He wasn't saying that His followers were going to need to keep obeying all of the commandments of the Mosaic Law concerning the Sabbath.
Christians today who think they're keeping the Sabbath almost never are. I mean, go back in Exodus and look at what was forbidden. I mean, you couldn't kindle a fire on the Sabbath. You couldn't cook. And so many Christians who think they're keeping the Sabbath, they do all of those things. You couldn't travel the distance that Christians traveled today. You were supposed to stay at your home. And so I don't know of anyone who literally keeps those commandments today among Christians to start with.
But why Jesus said when he said he was Lord of the Sabbath, and it's discussed again in the Matthew commentary, the Pharisees had been criticizing, if I remember the incident correctly, had been criticizing his apostles for taking grain when they were walking and rubbing it in their hands and eating it as they were walking through a field. Something they were allowed to do as far as eating grain in a field. It was lawful and the Sabbath laws don't address that.
And the same within healing on the Sabbath, which isn't forbidden in the law, but Jesus said," I am the Lord of the Sabbath." In other words, I'm the one who gave the Sabbath law. I can change it, I can modify it, I can interpret it however I want, because I know what the law was, what the Sabbath law was all about. So when announcing he was the Lord of the Sabbath, he wasn't saying it to instill more strict keeping of the Sabbath. He was announcing that he had the power to do away with the law entirely.
In fact, he says the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So in this historic faith, the courses that are available to you, I do have a message on what the early Christians believed about the Sabbath. And I would encourage you to listen to that. I go into a lot more detail, but certainly the early Christians did not keep the Jewish Sabbath. They believe the Sabbath pointed to a time, the Christian era when every day is sacred.
We don't treat one day as being more sacred than others, but we do good every day of the week, seven days a week.
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