Episode 105: Mark Part 45—Divorce and Oppression

Ever hear about “any cause” divorce? Jewish men in the first-century were committing a terrible crime against the wives of their youth and had come to see it as a right—as though marriage existed solely for their benefit and could be ended at their whim. She burns a meal? You can divorce her. Find someone prettier? You can divorce her. As they believed a man could not be guilty of adultery against His wife, and that adultery was only a crime against another man, Yeshua’s condemnation of their divorce entitlement mindset is particularly damning.

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10 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. ² And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ³ He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” ⁴ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” ⁵ And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. ⁶ But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, ⁸ and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. ⁹ What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” ¹⁰ And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹ And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹² and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” ¹³ And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. ¹⁵ Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” ¹⁶ And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

Let’s talk about the patriarchal Jewish culture of the first century and beyond—well beyond. In fact, what you will find in the Talmud would shock you, and Josephus, and the apocryphal writings. Whereas the Bible is incredibly egalitarian concerning women, compared to ancient Near Eastern culture, and especially in the Gospels and Epistles—meaning it recognized the inherent humanity of women  in a world where women were considered property (as were children). Genesis two and three, in the Eden account, recognize that in the beginning woman was created to be man’s equal partner but that the consequence of the fall would be that He would rule over her—nowhere is man commanded to rule over her—the text clearly states that it is a consequence of their knowing good and evil, aka being able to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. At the end of Genesis three, we see the first fractured relationship between husband and wife and in Genesis four, between brothers. In the tale of Lamech, we see the beginnings of polygyny, clan warfare and feuding, but it all started with the rupture of the first and primary human relationship of husband and wife. They were no longer allies but trapped in a cycle of longing and conflict. She would naturally long for life as it was, with intact familial relationships (and she would never have it) and he would exert dominance over her. No wonder with such strife that things went so haywire in the very next generation!  I have taught about this previously but we’re going to come at it via a slightly different angle because it reads differently in Matthew. The writer of Matthew was concerned with Yeshua/Jesus as the ultimate teacher/law interpreter of Israel, the new and greater Moses, whereas the Gospel of Mark is concerned with Yeshua as the Yahweh Warrior, fighting against the dominion of the enemy—and what was the first thing the enemy successfully attacked? The man and the woman through appealing to their desire to decide for themselves what was right or wrong and that will enter heavily into this week’s controversy dialogue.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that teaches them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.

10 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.

Now this is interesting. No one really knows for sure how long a time period went by between the Transfiguration at the beginning of chapter nine and the beginning of chapter ten. Was the transfiguration near Sukkot? Was that the reference to the setting up of the Tabernacles for Moses and Elijah? It’s a popular idea in some circles but I am not really buying it. I think there is this natural tendency to make the Gospels more Jewish which is unnecessary—they are completely Jewish. Ask any Jewish scholar and they will tell you that the Gospels and Epistles are all sectarian Jewish writings. I think that, in an attempt to really hammer home the fact that Yeshua is Jewish, people just grasp at any straw but when we focus on trying to do that, we often miss what is actually there. Classic example is how no one in the HR or MJ circles actually seem to want to talk about anything in Mark seven except for “what is the definition of food” and I get it, I’ve been there, but that’s not what Yeshua was saying. We miss that when we come in with an outside agenda. But anyway, it is spring now—Yeshua was probably holed up somewhere for the winter months teaching His disciples as time was running out and they needed to understand. So now they have ventured south—last week we had them in Jericho healing the blind man and they will not return to Galilee until after the Resurrection. We’re going to be real heavy on the controversy dialogues for a lot of weeks here. And, before we go here, I want to just say this. This is a touchy subject for a lot of folks. I am not going to go into the nightmare stories of what does and does not justify divorce. Yeshua is going to do here what He does and what He needed to do—bring people back to God’s purposes and intentions and away from the very wicked mindset that plagued those times and even our times. Not what we feel is justified sometimes or what we can get away with (which is what the Pharisees were doing) but what does God want for us—what did He want in the beginning. So, no defensiveness—we should be able to talk about this without people taking sides and saying, “But…but…” okay? This is like my fourth major teaching on this—I even wrote a chapter on it in my book Sexuality, Social Identity and Kinship Relations in the Bible. I don’t feel that it is the unforgivable sin and I don’t see anywhere that God feels that way either—but the situation Yeshua is addressing here is very wicked indeed, by anyone’s standards.

² And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 

Seems like a straightforward question, right? Um, no, this is not only a trap but a potentially deadly one. Remember where we are?–“Beyond the Jordan.” Who rules this area? Herod Antipas. Why was John the Baptist beheaded? Because he made Herod Antipas’s sister-in-law/wife angry by preaching against their incestuous marriage. She unilaterally divorced her husband Herod Philip (not the one who ruled in the North) and married his half-brother after becoming enamored of him during a visit to Rome. Unilateral divorces weren’t at all shocking, of course, as long as the man initiated it—but she was a woman and this was incest. In more ways than one—her being the half cousin of both husbands. Anyway, no one was happy about the murder of John the Baptist—he was universally loved and considered to be a righteous man according to Josephus, but they had to be hoping that they could get rid of Yeshua via the same controversy.

And yet, this is more nuanced that just the situation with Herod Antipas and his sister-in-law/wife. The Hillelite Pharisees were practicing a terrible form of oppression against their wives and this was one of their main points of contention with the Shammaites. As we see in tractate Gittin, it was their practice to divorce their wife for any reason whatsoever. Over a burnt meal, and Akiva even said if they found someone prettier—which, you know, spelled doom for every woman. Whereas the law only gave them permission if the wife was found guilty of indecency, the Hillelites could maintain a tyrannical form of control over their wives, who had better not be displeasing or they would be out on the street. In a time and culture where the women were unemployable and uneducated, this could result in financial ruin, starvation, and always dishonored the woman. Plus, and this will sound strange to anyone from my generation—the children were the legal property not of the wife but of the husband. She loses everything in one fell swoop. She is given her ketubah money agreed to in the marriage contract (unless she is actually guilty of adultery) and must go. But, this was a patriarchal society where marriage and feelings toward woman did not show any signs of being influenced by the Torah. The Pharisees were the kings of the loophole and this is one of the areas where the Essenes/Qumran sect really raked them over the coals—for divorce and for polygyny. They were criticized for being not only obsessed with wealth but also pleasure seekers. Yeshua is actually going to tackle both of these (divorce and polygyny) if we know what to look for.

And I am going to point out something—questions about divorce are always traps. No one asks this seeking information. They are always ready to spring if you don’t give the answer they want to hear. Ask me how I know!! But these guys are asking, “Is it lawful..” and here’s the problem with he question as phrased—it’s asking about legal precedents. “Do men have the right to divorce their wives?” But Yeshua is going to bring it back to Genesis two and Lev 19:18, where all questions about marriage should find their roots. This is always a question about legitimacy and not about legal grounds. People want to hear they are justified.

³ He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 

Notice the question. “What did Moses command you?” And it’s a trick question because there is no commandment to divorce. It is neither a positive or negative commandment, as opposed to, say, the incest laws or sacrificial or dietary laws. There is no, “Thou shalt divorce your wife, if…” And they know it—you can tell by their response, which is defensive. By phrasing the question the way He did, Yeshua puts them as the ones needing to defend themselves.

⁴ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”

You can almost hear them. “Moses lets us do it!!! He said we could write her a get and send her packing!” And I am sure they were genuine in their interpretation of Deut 24: “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house…” but, you know, a man who is justified because his wife has truly been indecent isn’t going be engaging in public questions and debates, he’d just going to either forgive and keep her or say, “Good riddance.” But they know they are trapped—there is no commandment here and they know it, they say “allowed.” An allowance, of course, if an escape hatch out of a bad situation. An allowance recognizes that things are not as they should be for whatever reason.

⁵ And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 

And BOOM! Notice that Yeshua makes no claims that this commandment came from God’s heart toward His people. Yeshua specifically says that Moses wrote it. Let’s go back and read it again to be very clear on it, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment…” and the next verse says, in effect, “But God…” So, they are in a really bad spot right now. In the best of situations, divorce is allowed because of hardness of heart and what does that even mean in this case? Hardness of heart in the case of “indecency” in marriage boils down to two things—betrayal on one side and unforgiveness on the other.  Of course, what I have not mentioned here is that male unfaithfulness wasn’t considered adultery but a crime against another man’s property rights—either spouse, betrothed or father. Women during this era were not treated as fully human with rights to consider their husbands to be cheating skunks if they visited prostitutes or took a second wife, but men would consider themselves wronged in the extreme if their wives stepped out and of course, taking a second husband was unthinkable. The Essenes rightly took the Hillelites to task over this and Yeshua does it here as well.

⁶ But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, ⁸ and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 

According to Yeshua in other Scriptures, who wrote the Torah? Moses did. The Torah is even called “Moses” in shorthand, like “According to Moses…such and such.” And so, it could be argued that this was written by Moses and this was therefore the actual command of Moses because this is lifted from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 with a slight bit of commentary thrown in. From the beginning, meaning God’s perfect intention and created state in the beginning before the fall, God made human beings male and female. That’s Genesis one. Genesis two goes right after Adam has his epiphany about Eve not being like one of the animals to be named and have dominion exercised over but of the same bone and flesh, the ezer k’negdo, an equal helper, an ally, a counterpart. And it is odd, the way it is stated because in Hebrew culture, a woman joined the man’s family, he never left his family—and the wife really had no standing until the birth of their first son. She was always lesser in status to his mother and unmarried sisters within the family. Really a wife gained her status through her male children and it was among them that she found companionship and loyalty. Marriage in Biblical times was what it was—a mess. It was not what God intended, with a man leaving the family of his birth emotionally and cleaving to his wife. In effect, he would cleave to her sexually to produce heirs and for pleasure, but man and wife were rarely much more than strangers in the ancient world. They were one-flesh sexually but otherwise, the man’s loyalties remained with his mother and father. Remember, the Bible records how things were but not always how they were intended to be. Marriage was and is a fallen relationship, as was/is parenting as we see in Genesis three and four. But Yeshua says that God demands a higher standard amongst His people—men and woman cleave to one another in a relationship of absolute love, vulnerability and trust. They become true allies, equals and partners—one another’s ezer k’negdo—and in that case, indecency and divorce and such would become unthinkable.

And Yeshua speaks here of two becoming one flesh—not three or four or five. There was no harem in the Garden—that was not the righteous intention or command. Lamech was the first polygynist, having two wives, but he was also the first recorded person to vow vengeance on anyone who would lay a finger on him. I have been teaching Genesis to the kids on my radio show and in my studies right now into Gen 4, one of the scholars I am reading made a good point—Torah doesn’t outright outlaw polygamy but the polygamous families portrayed are never happy or without severe drama and it is always associated with problems. Again, a hardness of heart issue. Look at the fruit in Scripture.  I want to give you a blurb from B. Yevamot 63b that talks about how they felt it was best to deal with a displeasing wife: Raba further stated: A bad wife, the amount of whose kethubah is large, [should be given] a rival at her side; as people say, ‘By her partner rather than by a thorn’. So, punish a wife who displeases you, whom you cannot afford to divorce (or don’t want to part with the money) with a second wife. It’s disgusting—like, you know, the problem is automatically her. Certainly, it couldn’t possibly be that a guy with that attitude would be the problem. It’s heartless. It’s the epitome of being hard-hearted. He’s an adulterer for doing it.

⁹ What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Make no mistake, Yeshua just told these guys that man is not lord of the marriage, where he can come and go as he pleases. God is lord of the marriage and man has no right to wrong his wife and call it good based on a technicality of how they read Deuteronomy 24. Yeshua is flat out telling them that their focus is upside down. It isn’t, “Can I divorce my wife.” It’s, “What are we getting wrong that we are even thinking about this and especially under our “any-cause divorce” rules.” In Matthew, while talking about divorce, the disciples flat out say that if a man can’t unilaterally divorce his wife then it is better not to get married. Speaking as a representative for womankind throughout the centuries, if that is their attitude then we are better off without them. You see, they saw marriage as an institution existing for the benefit and purposes of the man and when the man saw something that he thought of as more beneficial—even for purely sexual reasons like finding someone prettier or taking a second wife—they popped the escape hatch and never gave their wives a second glance. Tractate Gittin, dealing with divorces, is just very brutal. Women had no recourse. Divorce could come without warning and their fates were subject to a husband’s whims. But He is laying the divorce squarely on their own heads and calling them transgressors, which they are. It was horribly oppressive. A happily married woman, or so she assumed, could lose her husband in an hour and her children and everything. If she failed to find another husband before her ketubah money ran out then she would be destitute. And we ladies all know that there is always someone younger and prettier on the horizon—marriage is an act of absolute trust. Yeshua is stating that God has joined them with their wives and they should be loathe to divorce them. It is a last resort when the marriage covenant is shattered, not a matter of convenience.

In effect, here we have the bottom line—if the marriage is holy—no adultery, no destruction of the covenant by either partner, no indecency, no actual abuse, then divorce is unsanctioned by God.

¹⁰ And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 

We’ve talked about this before—when you respect someone, you never ask them questions in public for fear of shaming them and causing them to lose face. Matthew, as I mentioned before, gives the details of their shameful objection/question but Mark is more concerned with restoring Eden and the Second Exodus that is underway out of sin and death and this was a huge sin issue during those days and for a long time afterward. But the congregations of Messiah adopted a no divorce, no unfaithfulness, no betrayal attitude that set them apart not only from the Hillelite Pharisees (and by extension most of the Jews during that time, because people look for excuses to do what they want and they rarely go with the rulings that deny them a hot young new chick) but also the larger Greco-Roman world. I mean, if you read works like Sirach, aka Ecclesiasticus, and Josephus and the Talmud, it doesn’t speak kindly of women or in any sort of egalitarian manner. They were property. So were children. Men didn’t experience loss. That was for lesser beings like women and children. Look at Yeshua, on the other hand—He had women followers, women could sit at His feet and learn from Him, the first witnesses to the resurrection were women, 20% of those named by Paul as leaders in the early church were women—including apostles, teachers, prophets, and deacons. Women were expected to prophesy and contribute in the early congregations, they were benefactors, etc… unheard of in the ancient world. Although, we catch glimpses of it in Miriam, Deborah, Yael, and Huldah.

¹¹ And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,

I call this the “Thou shalt not have the upper hand,” commandment. This was shocking, as I alluded to before. Men in honor/shame societies were expected to be aggressive—physically, verbally, politically, professionally, and sexually. If you asked a man of that era, or even up until modern times in the Western world, it was expected for a man to behave in a manly fashion and manly meant everything that Yeshua stood against—revenge, domination, the lording of authority, ambition, sexual promiscuity, etc. Getting honor/reputation at all costs no matter who pays the price. They didn’t hear this the way we read it now because we live in a culture where, duh, or course it’s adultery when a man cheats on his wife but as I mentioned before—in that world you weren’t sinning against your wife by cheating or by taking another wife or through frivolous divorce and remarriage oy through taking a second wife. You were, however, sinning against the man who was her husband, betrothed, or father. That woman belonged to someone. She had no rights to expect faithfulness from her husband. Do you think that David’s wives were thrilled that he kept marrying more women? Leah and Rachel’s relationship was shattered, and there were accusations between them, according to Scripture. Leah accused Rachel of taking her husband! Rachel wanted sons in order to triumph over her sister. Neither one had any say in Laban’s or Jacob’s plans. No one cared. But here, Yeshua says that if a man divorces his wife and takes another wife, he is actually guilty of something he didn’t think he could possibly even be guilty of! After all, he wasn’t violating another man’s property, he observed all the legalities. She came home one day to a get, a divorce decree, or one was delivered to her along with her money and orders to vacate the premises immediately and leave her children behind. In the eyes of these Pharisees, all the legalities were observed and so Yahweh had to give His stamp of approval. I call it the difference between being a moralist and a legalist. Any child of an alcoholic who would look down on a cocaine or marijuana user can relate to this. Oh wait, you guys mostly don’t live in Idaho—it is still illegal here, so stick with me. You can be an alcoholic and feel good about yourself because you aren’t breaking the law, but people who use illegal drugs are criminals and so you are better than they are—even though you are just as impaired and damaging your kids just as much. I mean, if your kid needs to go to the hospital and they can’t depend on you because they are high—it doesn’t matter to them if it is because of booze, weed or coke. But to a legalist, it matters. Legal is okay, no matter how messed up the conclusions are—like here with the “any cause” Hillelite divorces. But Yeshua says that the man who does this is sinning against his wife, not against another man. This was revolutionary. Yeshua has, in effect, legally elevated the wronged wife to the status of any other man.

¹² and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

And, of course, because Yeshua always presents women and men on equal footing—sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. But there is more here because He is actually broaching the possibility that a woman can even do this. During this era, only rich and powerful women—like Herodias—could do something so scandalous. They would need to be independently wealthy. Although, the Pharisees did have a loophole—a woman was permitted to make her husband miserable in order to secure his divorcing her. I doubt it happened often unless a woman had other prospects or unless she was already miserable. Very few women would be stupid enough to do this if the husband was violent. Again, the brokenness here is heartbreaking. Yeshua is egalitarian but He doesn’t favor women over men. He favors the oppressed and vulnerable over those who oppress and are in charge. In this case, the men had all the power. I wonder what He would say today, how much would be the same and how much would be different.

I want to add one more thing—what was the purpose of the get, the divorce decree? It served the purpose of allowing the woman to marry again. According to Josephus in Antiquities 15.529, women were being forbidden to remarry unless they had not only the divorce decree but also their ex-husband’s permission. So, if he’s like, “Well, I don’t want her but I don’t want anyone else to have her either,” then she is stuck for life. In the ancient world, men often had that kind of absolute ownership over women for life. The get allowed by Moses was proof positive that she was divorced and eligible to take another husband—so she could not be accused of having two husbands at the same time. He couldn’t come back and say, “Whoa, there, I don’t know what she told you but this is my wife and you’ve wronged me.” It could be very dangerous—could result in not only the woman’s death but also in clan warfare. Again, hard-heartedness.

¹³ And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 

Let’s talk about children, whose legal status was dwarfed even by that of women. And, I need to point out that if the disciples were the age most scholars think they were, they were barely what we would call adults anyway.  Anyway, as though Yeshua had never taught them before about their ambition problems and their super-secret cool kid club mentality and “whoever exalts himself will be humbled” and all that jazz, here they are abusing their (supposed) authority yet again. Children, by definition the least of these until just recently historically, are being rebuked and shooed away as though they are beneath Yeshua’s notice but, again, the disciples will find themselves publicly rebuked, in front of these children and their parents.

¹⁴ But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 

“Do not hinder them”—this is the same language we saw with their hindering, being stumbling blocks, to that exorcist. They were flat out told that hindering people—if they did it, it would be better to have a large millstone tied around their neck and dumped into the Sea of Galilee, which is super deep. They are behaving, again, like they are the doorkeepers to the Kingdom of Heaven and if they don’t allow you in, for whatever reason, you don’t get in. They will actually let the rich young man come right on in. They allow the Pharisees and Scribes to come. They allow the synagogue leader. Who do they shoo away? The blind and the children. Reminds me of a situation in James:

2 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. ² For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, ³ and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” ⁴ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵ Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? ⁶ But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? ⁷ Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

Yeshua repeatedly warns them that those who are great in the Kingdom are generally not those who are great in this life. He is forever having to deal with their ambitions and their expectations of worldly glory. As they near Jerusalem, it has to be becoming more and more disheartening for Him that they still don’t get that His followers after the resurrection will largely be the very people the disciples are despising.

¹⁵ Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” 

People often make this about needing to be innocent but no one in the ancient world had any illusions about children being inherently innocent. What children do have over us is a willingness to just accept a gift without question or suspicion. It’s why it is so easy to take advantage of kids—offer them something and, oftentimes even if they have been trained to say no, they will still accept it. When the disciples see the blind beggar or the child or the woman, they see someone with nothing to offer their idea of the Kingdom but Yeshua simply sees people who will accept it gladly knowing that they have nothing to offer. What the disciples see as a liability, Yeshua sees from the vantage point of His upside-down Gospel. He sees people who will come in with absolute loyalty, knowing they haven’t earned it because they have nothing in that culture to earn it with. They will come in without pride—as opposed to the disciples who are still seeing their future in terms of eschatological glory yet in terms of worldly rewards of power and prestige. They don’t see the reality of servanthood, persecution, deprivation, suffering and death in their future. They still see themselves as people of prestige, who are insiders with the clout to accept and exclude as per their cultural prejudices. And Yeshua warns them, again, that unless they receive the Kingdom as people who can see it as an unmerited gift, they won’t be able to enter in at all.

¹⁶ And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Yeshua takes the children in His arms and pays attention to them. He blesses them. He actually lays hands on them just like he would an adult and treats them like fully realized human beings. Yeshua sees equal worth in all human beings—a theme we see in Paul. No Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female—and we could add, no child or adult. Yeshua is no respecter of persons in that He sees the person, and not the labels or the gender or social status.

I want to say something here before we close out. I am really disturbed at the propensity for people to read the hard commands of Yeshua and to go to the Torah and the prophets looking for a loophole and why He didn’t really mean it. Yeshua, right here, is overturning a really messed up interpretation of the Torah. And that’s the problem with Torah—it isn’t internal, it is external. External ordinances will always be toyed with for good or for bad to satisfy our agendas. But Yeshua, according to Hebrews, is the final revelation of God. If He says something, I would rather take Him too seriously than to dare to proof-text Him. For those of you who don’t know what proof-texting means, it is searching the Bible for verses that will support our position while ignoring context and also ignoring the verses which don’t support our position. There are times when we can look for the context of what He is saying and that is fine but we should never outright negate His words just because they are hard. His Kingdom is not like this world and so we should be very fearful of elevating any revelation through any mere human above His words.

Anyway, next week we are going to talk about the rich young ruler, who has zero issues slipping past the disciples and we will talk about that pesky urban legend of the camel going through the “eye of the needle” gate.