Why You Can Learn from Rabbis about Being a Doer of the Word

Encore Podcast: Light on Life Season 9 Episode 40

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Why You Can Learn from Rabbis about Being a Doer of the Word

It is one thing to memorize certain verses in the Bible. It is another to be a doer of the Word you’ve remembered. There is a story of a missionary in Korea who had a visit from a native convert who lived a hundred miles away and who walked four days to reach the mission station. The pilgrim recited proudly, without a single mistake, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. The missionary was delighted, but he felt that he ought to warn the man that memorizing was not enough—that it was necessary to practice the words and memorize them.

The Korean’s face lit up with happy smiles. “That is the way I learned it,” he said. “I tried to memorize it, but it wouldn’t stick. So, I hit upon this plan—I would memorize a verse, find a heathen neighbor of mine, and practice it on him. Then I found it would stick.” Scripture is the guideline for a believer’s life. Are you just reading the Bible, or are you doing it?1

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What Can A Rabbi Teach Us about Selling Out to God?

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You can view a basic transcript of this podcast at the bottom of this section.

Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put it into operation.
This week’s call is:

Successful people make quality decisions and stick to them.  Today, decide to be a doer of God’s Word.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome through it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question: What do you do to remind yourself to be a doer of God’s Word? Please share your comments in the comments section below.

Episode Resources

You can find more information on ‘Doing the Word’ by clicking on the links above.
  1. #S6-047: Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success [Podcast]

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 41 years, emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate it on Stitcher Radio and leave a review. If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic, you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at emery@emeryhorvath.com.

Podcast Notes

Review

  • So, in a previous podcast, we looked at some Old Testament people who understood that hearing and doing God’s Word were equivalent actions.
  • In that same podcast, we also looked at the Shema, The Jewish prayer of dedication and commitment.
  • We further drove the nail home by taking a hard look at the word ‘hearken,’ which, in the KJV, is the same Hebrew word for shema.
  • To seal the deal, we’ve looked at the concept of people asking God to hear their prayers and what happens when God says, I have listened to your prayer.
  • If God ever said, I’ve heard you, mark it down that request is a done deal.
  • In today’s podcast, we want to take the above further by looking at what some Jewish rabbis taught about hearing and being a doer of God’s Word.

What the Rabbis Said about Being a Doer of the Word

  • So, why should you care about what Jewish Rabbis think since you are a New Testament child of God?
  • After all, you’ve received Jesus; they haven’t; why should you even look in their direction?
  • To answer that question, here’s the illustration of the day.
    • This illustration is a personal one, and it took place a great many years ago. I had just recently come to Jesus. I graduated from college and had my first degree job. My co-workers knew I was a Christian. One day, a Jehovah’s Witness came up to me and glanced at the portion of the New Testament that I was reading. I was in the book of Timothy. With all his religious error, this man pointed out a word in that verse that I had never seen before. I’ve thought about this encounter many times over the last 40-odd years, and I will never forget how God used a Jehovah’s Witness to get over to my thinking a truth from His Word.
  • So, here’s a vital lesson.
  • You can learn something from anybody; if your heart is in the right place, that is, open to the Spirit of God.
  • Do you remember in the book of Second Peter this statement about Balaam, whose antics are recorded in the Book of Numbers?

2 Peter 2:16 (GW) — 16 But he was convicted for his evil. A donkey, which normally can’t talk, spoke with a human voice and wouldn’t allow the prophet to continue his insanity.

  • God gave direction to Balaam out of a donkey’s mouth, and if he could receive insight that way, there’s hope for you and me.
  • God can get His wisdom to you in a more significant number of avenues as long as you quit putting stop signs on the road to revelation.
  • So, you CAN learn some things from the Jewish Rabbis.

Why You Can Learn from Jewish Rabbis about Being a Doer of the Word

  • Why can you learn about being a doer of the Word from the Rabbis?
  • Well, for one reason, they know the Old Testament better than you do.
  • The Jews as a people study the scriptures from childhood.
  • They learn early on, to apply the teachings of the Old Testament to their lives.
  • It’s part of what it means to be Jewish.
  • Studying the Torah and discussing how to live it is as common as bread and butter.
  • It’s just part of their nationality and was mainly displayed in ancient times.
  • Now, it wasn’t only a cultural piece.

No Such Thing as Religion in Ancient Times

  • Consider the following, and with that thought, here’s the Quote of the Day.

A first issue we have to broach is that the ancient world did not have something called ‘religion’ as we understand it today. If by ‘religion’ we mean a body of beliefs about ‘the supernatural’, with various ethical corollaries that can be kept in a separate compartment from secular culture, then clearly there was no such thing as ‘religion’ in that sense. There wasn’t a word for that kind of thing, because it was unknown.2

Being A Doer of the Word: What, No Religion?

  • Did you hear that they didn’t have a word for religion in the early days of the New Testament?
  • The concept of religion did not exist in Jesus’ day.
  • There was no religious obligation on a Sunday or the separation of religious duties confined to a specific day of the week.
  • Devotion to the deity of choice for Greeks and Romans was “an everyday all of life” focus.
  • A Greek or a Roman woke up thinking how he could please the little ‘g’ gods that day.
  • The Jews were the same.
  • They spoke and focused on the true God in their daily actions and thoughts.
  • They didn’t live a secular life Sunday through Friday and showed up at the synagogue Saturday to fulfill some religious duty.
  • All of this separation business is a western world phenomenon.
  • These folks in the western hemisphere separated religion from life.
  • It wasn’t like that in Judaism.
  • I want to repeat separation of church and state didn’t exist in the ancient world.
  • That development is a western entity.
  • For the Greeks, worshiping Zeus was just part of being Greek.
  • To be a good Roman, you bowed down to Jupiter as the lead dog.
  • Jupiter and Zeus were, in truth, the same god.
  • The Romans just carried Zeus over and gave him a different name.
  • To the Jews, there was but one God, the maker of heaven and earth.

Being A Doer of the Word: Another ‘No Religion’ Quote

  • According to the book, the “New Testament and It’s World” written by N.T. Wright and Michael Bird, from the Roman side, the world ‘religion’ or ‘religio’ in Latin, could mean ‘scruple’ in the sense of one’s duties to the gods or the idea of the ‘binding together’ of gods and humans in a community.3
  • For the Greeks, the main terms we find for religious activity are words also found in the New Testament; ‘godliness,’ ‘worship,’ and the ‘service’ associated with it.4
  • Of course, this is a secular Greek usage of these words.
  • And they used these words to worship their little ’g’ gods.
  • That shouldn’t be confusing that the same Greek word for worshiping a false god is the same word used by the New Testament writers to serve the Most High and Only True God of planet earth.

Being A Doer of the Word: One More ‘No Religion’ Quote

  • Michael Bird goes on to say.

The word ‘religion’ only gradually came to be used in the ancient world in relation to Christianity when it was fashioning a way of separating cult from culture. The idea that there might then be different ‘religions’ was an innovation of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. And this sense of a plurality of ‘religions’ was then exported from the modern west to other parts of the world, causing surprise, for instance, among the sages of India who discovered, thanks to the colonizing British, that they had a ‘religion’ called ‘Hinduism.’5

  • So, you see, religion was not religion as we know it in the New Testament era.

How the Jews Lived the Torah and Were Doers of the Word

The Early Church’s Mentality of Being a Doer of the Word

  • The first believers in Jesus didn’t have a ‘go to church; it’s Sunday’ mentality because they realized they were the church.
  • The reason?
  • As we have discussed, most early disciples were Jewish, raised in the Word.
  • So, Jews had a leg up on living holy as compared to Gentiles because they were brought up in the Old Testament from childhood.
  • There were conflicts between Jesus and the rabbis, detailed in the gospels.
  • But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes.

Everything that the Rabbis Taught Wasn’t Wrong

  • There were many things Jesus agreed with because the rabbis had gotten it right.
  • Jesus asked one lawyer what the Great Commandment in the Law was.

Luke 10:25–28 (ESV) — 25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

  • So, they got some things correct; Jesus said so.
  • You can learn from the ‘correct’ interpretations and applications of the Torah.
  • Recently, I’ve been reading a book on Jewish ethics, and it’s terrific.
  • It has helped me.
  • You can learn from many avenues if you put the Spirit of God with it.
  • So, early Christians had in their DNA because the early Christians were primarily Jewish, Old Testament teachings of the Rabbis.

The Mishnah: Historical Background

  • Now, let’s talk about Rabbi’s in general and the Mishnah specifically.
  • And, with that thought, here’s the historical background of the day.
  • Our historical background comes from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary.

The Mishnah attributes its materials to about 150 authorities, who flourished in the three-century period from ca. 50 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (fewer than 80 authorities with any frequency). These teachers, usually given the title “rabbi,” appear in the Mishnah regularly grouped into roughly three consistories: (1) teachers who flourished before Rome’s destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. V 4, p 872 (the Pharisaic period), (2) those who taught after that first war against Rome but before the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–35 C.E. (the Yavnean period), and (3) authorities living in the period from the Bar Kokhba revolt to the Mishnah’s reduction to writing ca. 200 C.E. (the Ushan period) (see Danby 1977: 799–800).6

  • So, for roughly 300 years, rabbis made interpretative rulings that came into book form around the year 200 A.D.

Rabbis Hillel and Shammai

  • During this time, there were two central teaching rabbis and two primary rabbinic schools of thought, Hillel and Shammai.
  • Shammai was probably a Type A personality kind of Rabbi.
  • He was a stickler for the law and pushed for the strictest interpretation
  • Hillel was probably a Type B personality kind of Rabbi.
  • He pushed for a more lenient and gentler approach to the Law.
  • Here’s what I mean by that.
  • Do you remember when Jesus wanted to go through a Samaritan town, and they refused to allow Him to pass through?
  • Some of the disciple’s reactions to that were to call fire down from heaven and burn up all those people.
  • That would be a Shammai-type reaction.
  • What about a Hillel-type response? Where is that in the Bible?

Being A Doer of The Word: Hillel’s Impact in the New Testament

  • It’s over in Acts; let’s take a look.

Acts 5:33–39 (ESV) — 33 When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.

  • So, the backdrop here is the bold, in-your-face testimony of the disciples of Jesus.
  • The lame man received his healing at the Beautiful Gate.
  • The religious crowd threatened the disciples forbidding them from teaching in Jesus’ Name.
  • They refused and kept on preaching.
  • God continued to move with signs and wonders at the hands of the disciples.
  • The religious crowd got mad about that, arrested the disciples, and threw them in jail.
  • You know the story.
  • An angel came a set them free from prison.
  • The disciples went back to preaching and teaching Jesus.
  • The religious bunch cornered the disciples again and set them before the High Priest.
  • That didn’t stop anything.
  • The disciples testified of Jesus right in the face of the High Priest.
  • That’s when they got mad enough to kill.
  • That’s the context, so let’s continue to read.

Acts 5:34 (ESV) 34 But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while.

Rabbi Gamaliel

  • Who is Gamaliel?
  • He is the grandson of Hillel, the gentler Rabbi.
  • Look at His approach here.

Acts 5:33–39 – 35 And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. 36 For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. 37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. 38 So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; 39 but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” So they took his advice,

  • If Gamaliel were Shammai’s grandchild instead of Hillel, these disciples would have lost their lives.
  • Hillel and Shammai had much debate, but despite that, they loved and respected each other.
  • They just saw the Law a little differently.
  • Hillel’s devotion to being a doer of the Word was off the charts.
  • He loved God’s Word.

Rabbis As Lay Teachers

  • Rabbis were like lay teachers in Judaism during Jesus’ day.
  • They taught the Torah, but they also worked a secular job.
  • Paul was a Rabbi and a tent-maker.

Acts 18:3 (ESV) — 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

  • The ‘he’ in this verse is Paul the Apostle.
  • And the ‘them’ in this verse are Priscilla and Aquila.
  • All three were tent-makers by trade.
  • So Rabbi Paul taught, and he worked.

Listen to the Rabbi on Being a Doer of the Word

  • Let’s listen in on the Rabbis we’ve been talking about.
  • Let’s see what they say about hearing and doing the Word.
  • These excerpts are taken from the Mishnah, specifically from a section called Pirkei Avot.
  • This section of the Mishnah deals with how the rabbis viewed the subject of ethics or what was ethical, kind, righteous behavior.
  • Some of it is fascinating reading.
  • Some of these sayings go back to Moses and Sinai.

Pirqe Abot 5:14

         5:14      V      A      There are four sorts among those who go to the study house:
               B      he who goes but does not carry out [what he learns]— he has at least the reward for the going.
               C      He who practices but does not go [to study]—he has at least the reward for the doing.
               D      He who both goes and practices—he is truly pious.
               E      He who neither goes nor practices—he is truly wicked.7
  • So, who is the genuinely pious soul?
  • It’s the person who goes to study the Word and who practices what He has studied.
  • Here’s the second quote from the Mishnah on being a doer of the Word.

Pirqe Abot 1:17

               A      Simeon his son says,
         (1) “All my life I grew up among the sages, and I found nothing better for a person [the body] than silence.
         (2) “And not the learning is the main thing but the doing.
         (3) “And whoever talks too much causes sin8
  • Did you hear it?
  • Learning is the main thing; the doing is the main thing.
  • Here is one more passage on being a doer of the Word from Rabbi Haninah.

Pirqe Abot 3:9

               A      R. Haninah b. Dosa says, “For anyone whose fear of sin takes precedence over his wisdom, his wisdom will endure.
               B      “And for anyone whose wisdom takes precedence over his fear of sin, his wisdom will not endure.”
      II      C      He would say, “Anyone whose deeds are more than his wisdom— his wisdom will endure.
               D      “And anyone whose wisdom is more than his deeds—his wisdom will not endure.”9
  • Anyone whose deeds are more than his wisdom, his wisdom will endure.
  • That is, if you do the Word of God, you know even though you don’t understand every little part of it, your wisdom increases.
  • Your wisdom will grow with the doing.
  • Now, if you have more wisdom than doing, your understanding will not endure.
  • So even Jewish rabbis believed being a doer of the Word was right.
  • What about you today?
  • Do you believe in being a doer of God’s Word?
  • If not, commit today.

Why You Don’t Have to Be Sick in Light of the Bible

References:

  1. Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Practical Illustrations: 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 2003) ↩
  2. Wright, N. T., and Michael F. Bird. The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians. London; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic; SPCK, 2019, 152. ↩
  3. N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (London; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic; SPCK, 2019), 152. ↩
  4. Ibid ↩
  5. N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (London; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic; SPCK, 2019), 152. ↩
  6. Roger Brooks, “Mishnah,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 871–872. ↩
  7. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah : A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 688. ↩
  8. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah : A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 674. ↩
  9. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah : A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 679–680. ↩

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