Part #2 Matthew 5-7 (Finding The Gospels in The Weekly Torah Portions)
It’s evident in this week’s reading of ‘The Sermon on The Mount’, that Jesus is continuing in this model of 1st Century Hebraic discipleship training, as it is written for us in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Luke chapter 6 verse 40, where Jesus says: “Every disciple when fully trained will be like his teacher”.
According to the Words of Jesus, it’s clear that the goal of Biblical Discipleship is, when the disciple was fully trained, he became the Teacher and passed on the teaching to his own disciples, who in turn, when his Disciple were fully trained, became Teachers and raised up disciples of their own.
But where did this method of Discipleship begin, and who did it begin with? Well, in first century Midrashic literature, we find that our father Abraham gets the credit for giving us the design of true Discipleship. He’s also accredited as beginning the structure of the first Bible School called in Hebrew: ‘Yeshiva' which simply means: ‘A Scholarly Bible School for Discipleship’.
Therefore if ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ is Jesus’ Scholarly Bible School for Discipleship, it makes us ask the question, is Jesus continuing in the Bible School System that was founded by our father Abraham, or is He doing something brand new? The only way to know for sure, is to look back to this week’s Torah Portion where we’re introduced to our father Abraham.