One of the ways the rabbis taught was by using some of the ideas and debates of their own culture.
Read Matthew 19:1-9 and journal your thoughts
When reading this piece of text, the thing that most of us are probably not familiar with ideas of two great and very popular rabbis Shammai and Hillel, which were heavily debated during the time of Jesus. Generally speaking Shammai held a much more strict view of how someone should interpret the Law, where Hillel was not. What’s interesting is that Shammai and Hillel didn’t actually disagree on that much, but as the years went on, their followers were more heavily divided.
In today’s verse the Pharisees ask Jesus whether it’s ok to divorce under any circumstance. This is one of the few areas where Shammai and Hillel disagreed what’s interesting is that here Jesus sides with Shammai, whereas he usually sides with Hillel.
What we have to understand by looking at this is that Jesus taught by using their culture, by talking about the things that were relevant to them in their day. So when we begin to study the Scriptures and we come across one of those things that either seems interesting or we just don’t understand, we may discover that this thing was something that was heavily discussed in their culture.
Today mediate on how God used their culture to speak to them, and how He wants to use our culture to speak to us.
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