hey welcome back to class i wanted to talk for a couple of minutes about how one could use the observations that you made in in your detailed observation work to to do some preliminary interpretive work on the meaning of matthew 5 48 be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect now this is one of those verses that really bothers folks because it seems like it's an impossible command it's something that it's impossible to attain perfection and now i'm not going to do a deep dive word study on perfection that's another topic but what i want to show is that we can say some really powerful things on what those ver that verse may mean simply from making some careful observations so what does it mean to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect let's let's look at a couple of things let's first of all note verse 48 itself now a couple of words that kick out immediately and something that we have to pay attention to is notice that we have the word therefore and what does therefore suggest again whenever you run into it therefore you should say what's the therefore therefore this is clearly a causation if you go back and look at the survey work to me at least it looks as though verse 48 is the effect of this long argument that jesus is making from 517 to 548 it's at least the effect caused by verses 43 to 47 but i think you can argue that it goes all the way back to the beginning of this whole text and so we want to note that the therefore this is all about cause and effect and what is the cause the causes that you have heard it said right it said but i say this contrast right and what was the contrast remember what was being contrasted specifically all the way through this text it wasn't the old testament a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking that jesus is contrasting the old testament with his teaching well it's clear from the context if you go back to 5 17 to 20 the introductory text or even the general statement jesus already said i haven't come to abolish the law or the prophets i've come to fulfill them and it's in fact he says not one iota not the smallest letter is going to disappear from the law and in fact those who break them are going to be called least right and the kingdom of heaven and instead jesus goes for a maximal tr a fact he says unless your righteousness succeeds that of the scribes and the pharisees you'll not ever enter the kingdom of heaven so what jesus is getting at here is a maximal you've heard it said and it's not from the old testament he's talking about um what was what the oral tradition the add-ons from the pharisees and the teachers the teachers of the law right so the contrast is going to be with them and instead jesus is going to talk about a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the pharisees and so when he says be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect we want to see that there's a different standard the standard isn't the religious leadership of jesus's day who had again for good reasons and a lot of times we think of the pharisees as bad guys but the pharisees loved the scriptures and what they were trying to do they created a method to actually live out the old testament law in their modern context which again that would have been first century but what they were trying to do is they didn't they weren't trying to add to the law they were trying to interpret the law and make applications of it now what jesus is doing in this text this is showing that their interpretations are inadequate because they're minimizing the law instead of maximizing the law so first of all we want to see that what's going on here is there is a contrast between the teaching of jesus in that of the religious leaders of his day so when he says therefore be perfect as the heavenly father is perfect he's raising the standard not to the scribes and the pharisees which again by the way would have been a high standard they the people looked up to the pharisees and the teachers of the law but jesus says they're not looking up high enough they need to look at the god the father who's the one who actually inspired these scriptures in the first place and so just notice that the cause is that series and there there are at least six right there's six of these you have heard it says but i say and then the effect notice that's the seventh right be perfect as the heavenly father is perfect so you get this kind of on the seventh teaching in this whole text you get this the idea of perfection so therefore is important because it connects this as the logical climax as the effect of these teachings right what's it mean to do what jesus says in contrast to what the pharisees and the scribes were teaching it's to actually be like the heavenly father all right and so let's again let's notice that the standard now is the heavenly father and what's important here is this is the part of the new testament where father language clusters right this shows up beginning in 545 where it talks about your father in heaven so we see father language juice for god here and that's going to continue into chapter six so you can see chapter six verse one your father in heaven uh verse four you then your father who sees in secret verse uh a little further into the lord's prayer our father who is in heaven do not be like them for your father knows what you need so father language is important here in chapters five and six and the reason i want to say that is when we're talking about perfection again we're not doing the word study yet we're just making some observation it's perfect like a father right this didn't say be perfect as your heavenly judge is perfect or heavenly mathematician or king and you could have used a whole bunch of other pieces right it uses father this uses relational language so when we talk about perfection we're not talking about like mathematical perfection right we're talking about perfection in a way that's like the heavenly father right and so again and heavenly is an important word too because that contrasts with earthly right so our father in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven so the comparison again aren't the earthly pharisees and teachers of the law it's the heavenly father there's a higher standard here so we just want to notice that that's very significant for our looking at our text and what is it about the father just make a third quick comment i want to give you some ideas about how you can use your observations to begin to answer questions so what does it mean to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect well one of the clear things is it's about love right our last text versus or our last paragraph here verses 43 to 47 makes a big deal about love and it was said love your neighbor hate your enemies but again that's easy right and so jesus clearly teaches and uses god the father as an example he says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so what does it look like to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect it's going to embody loving enemies and praying for those who persecute and that's going to be a marker and that's got to sew that so notice the purpose there right so that you'll be what sons and daughters of the father in heaven so we can be sons and daughters by doing these things what's it look like to be perfect it's going to have a it's a radical piece that now doesn't limit neighbor to persons in proximity to us doesn't limit neighbor the persons that we like because again that in 43 to 47 you notice those rhetorical questions even tax collectors love those who love you even pagans greet those who greet you right and so what is the suggestion that the pharisees and teachers laws are closer to those of the same rules the tax collectors have or the um gentiles or pagans do than what god has so again we want to notice the the comparison right and this would and if we take on god's characteristics we're going to be sons daughters of the father in heaven and what's what's the key differentiator how does god love the enemies notice what does god do he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends reign on the righteous and the unrighteous so god loves without discrimination that's the powerful lesson that's here right and so when we talk about perfection we're talking about perfection in the way that we actually can love other people and even to the extent that we can love our enemies again i'm going to stop here i wanted to use this purely for illustrative purposes as you continue to work through the assignments don't ever think that you have to go outside the biblical text to find substantive evidence now am i done interpreting verse 48 no not at all i could do a word study here we can think about some parallel passages we could do more work on the pharisees and i actually could go back through this whole segment 5 17 to 48 and muster even more evidence that's what the process is but what i want you to see is just these couple of things that i've been talking about over the last 10 minutes this gives you some real substance to being able to understand and interpret a passage so as you're going ahead and working on interpretations again when i talk about using the context you want to do it essentially in three ways again i've illustrated two of those ways here you want to look at the immediate context and i did that in these in most of these um discussion pieces here pulling from essentially that last paragraph that's the immediate context you also want to draw from the segment and in this case the segment would be going back to 5 17 to 48 and i've drawn that in as well and then broader book well i actually did that too because i talked about the father language how that shows up even in this next segment so just notice that so just using this a little bit of the context we've done a lot now how could you fill this out and do even more we could do historical background again to study a little bit more about what who the scribes and the pharisees were we could do word studies like it would make sense to do a word study on perfect here see if it shows up elsewhere in the book and what it might mean what some insights would be we could also go back and look at words like righteousness because that's shown up a couple of different times we saw it at the beginning and uh of in 5 17 to 20 and it shows up here in 543 to 48. we can look at that and then of course the last thing that you do after you've done a lot of your own work so we're going to look at a couple of commentaries and make sure for this class use the france commentary and also look at keener's book which is the ivp background commentary on the on the whole scriptures uh it's right here fantastic book and again the france book um i have it laying here somewhere but i don't i don't see my copy those are both available for free if you're in the class you can just go to the syllabus and you can see the simple syllabus gives you links to electronic copies of those so there's no excuse not to use outstanding commentaries let me know if you have any questions i hope this video helps and i will talk to you soon in in the class