This episode of the Radically Christian Bible Study Podcast tackles some crucial questions about discipleship and following Jesus in today’s world. What does it really mean to be a disciple of Christ? How do we reconcile Jesus’ radical teachings, like loving our enemies and not storing up treasures on earth, with the realities of modern life? The conversation explores the tension between obedience to Jesus’ commands and the challenges of living them out in a world that often seems at odds with Christian values.
The discussion centers on Matthew’s gospel, examining how it presents Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and the ultimate authority. The podcast explores key concepts from the Sermon on the Mount, unpacking what it means to be salt and light in the world without trying to change it through force. It addresses the nature of Christian obedience, the role of forgiveness, and the hope of resurrection that makes discipleship worthwhile despite its costs.
The guest for this episode is Travis Bookout, the preaching minister for the Maryville Church of Christ. Travis has written books on the gospels of John, Mark, and Matthew, and is currently working on his Doctorate of Educational Ministry from Southern Seminary. Travis brings both scholarly insight and practical experience to the conversation about discipleship and living out the teachings of Jesus in today’s world.
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Transcript (Credit: Beth Tabor)
Welcome to the Radically Christian Bible Study Podcast. I’m your host, Wes McAdams. Here we have one goal: Learn to love like Jesus. As many of you know, we’re in the middle of a series on discipleship, and the gospel of Matthew has a lot to teach us about being disciples of Jesus. My guest today just finished a book on the gospel of Matthew, and it is excellent. He has so much wisdom to share with us. My guest is Travis Bookout. Travis is the preaching minister for the Maryville Church of Christ. He’s written books on the gospel of John, Mark, and now Matthew, and is currently working on his Doctor of Educational Ministry from Southern Seminary. He has been married to his wife, Lauren, for 16 years, and they have two sons, Oliver and Levi.
Before we get to that Bible study, I want to read from Matthew chapter 28, starting in verse 18, which says, “Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”
I hope that today’s discussion and conversation and Bible study is encouraging to you. I hope that it gives you a better appreciation of the gospel account of Matthew, and, as always, I hope that this conversation helps all of us learn to love like Jesus.
WES: Travis Bookout, welcome to the podcast, Brother.
TRAVIS: Hey, thank you so much. Glad to be here.
WES: It is fantastic to get to visit with you, and I’m excited about this conversation. I’m excited about telling people about your new book on Matthew, God With Us. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed reading that, and I can’t wait for other people to read it, as well. But today we’re specifically going to talk about discipleship, and I’m asking all of the guests that are part of this series on discipleship what their take or their definition of discipleship is. So how would you define what it means to be a disciple?
TRAVIS: That’s a great question, and it’s one that, you know, I don’t know that I have a super unique or creative answer. What I wrote down was being a faithful learner who shares and embodies the beliefs, actions, and mission of the teacher, and I think that’s basically ‑‑ it’s a transformation into the image of the teacher through listening and through following and imitation, and I think that’s ultimately what Jesus calls us to be, and, you know, Matthew has some helpful ways of taking that from just a definition to something you actually embody and do.
WES: Yeah. And I love a lot of those words that you used, transformation into his image and embodiment, and Matthew does give us a pretty unique take on discipleship. So I’d love to hear your thoughts, in general, about the gospel of Matthew even before we talk about the specifics of how that relates to discipleship. But what did you notice as you have been studying? I’m sure you’ve been pouring into and allowing this book to pour into you quite a bit here recently, so what’s your take on the gospel of Matthew?
TRAVIS: Good book. I like it. Matthew’s fantastic, and it is ‑‑ you know, each of the gospels ‑‑ you know, especially you have like the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they have a lot of similarities, and one of the things that I tried to focus on in the book that I wrote are some of the ‑‑ what makes them unique from one another, and Matthew has a couple of things that seem to be ‑‑ not that they’re absent in the other ones, but they are a special point of emphasis in the gospel of Matthew.
One of those key ideas is that Jesus is the fulfillment of so many scriptures from the Old Testament, or from the Hebrew scriptures, and how those come to a deeper and fuller meaning when you look to Jesus. And what that meaning often represents, I think, is that Jesus should be seen in comparison to a lot of key figures and key ideas from the Old Testament.
So one thing that can sometimes be problematic for readers is you read through Matthew, and he’ll say “This happened to fulfill what the prophet said,” and he’ll quote, like, Hosea 11:1, and you go and you read Hosea 11:1, and it says, “When Israel was a youth, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” And you read that and you think, well, okay, that’s about Israel coming out of Egypt, like that’s the Exodus story. And then you keep reading Hosea and you come to find out that the son is a disobedient son who keeps going after idols and all of these things. And you think, how in the world does Jesus fulfill a passage that’s about Israel being disobedient?
And I think the way you do that ‑‑ and this is just kind of an example of the type of thing that Matthew regularly does when he uses the word “fulfillment,” is Jesus should be seen as the faithful Israel who comes to fulfill and complete what was lacking in the Israel that God had called. So Israel was called with a mission and, repeatedly, they don’t fulfill their mission or they fall short of their mission, and so Jesus, as an Israelite, comes and takes on the identity of Israel and he fulfills what was lacking. So Jesus does go to Egypt and he has his own Egypt story, his own Exodus story where he comes out of Egypt. Jesus does go to the wilderness, but where Israel failed and a generation died, Jesus is tempted but is overwhelmingly successful. Jesus is able to go up on the mountain like Moses did and get to the heart of what the law was always intended to produce in the Israelites, and he is trying to produce that in his disciples, so that, as Israel is called to be a light to the nations, the disciples can be the light of the world. And just all the way through you see that Jesus is taking on these different roles. He takes on a role like Moses. He takes on a role like Israel. He takes on a role like David or the son of David. And then, in every one of them, you see that Jesus is not only taking on that role, but he’s doing it in greater and in superior ways than could have been seen or recognized beforehand. So that’s one of the unique ways that Matthew tells the Jesus story.
Along the way, he does several other things. He presents Jesus as this authoritative teacher. There are like five major speeches in the gospel of Matthew. If you take those speeches out and you take out the birth narrative and, depending on the manuscripts, the resurrection narratives, Matthew is a whole lot like Mark. It follows a lot of the same structure, a lot of the same chronology, and even the same wording. But Matthew has a birth narrative and a greater resurrection narrative, and then it has these five speeches interspersed. And I think those five speeches ‑‑ they give us deeper insight into what the kingdom is all about, the kingdom message, so that’s a key idea, is the idea of the kingdom of heaven, and it shows how to live in that kingdom, how to faithfully endure for that kingdom. It answers some of the mysteries of that kingdom. It shows you the mindset of humility that’s essential to the kingdom, and the hope in the coming of the kingdom.
And so you can look at these five speeches, and afterwards you come to realize that Jesus is speaking not only with the authority that comes from some great rabbi or some great person, but he’s speaking with the very authority of God. So he’s introduced in the book as “God with us,” and by the end of it he has all authority in heaven and on earth. Like there’s no person who can have all authority in heaven and on earth. The person who has all authority in heaven is God, and we might see counterfeit authorities on earth, but Jesus is the one who actually is the supreme authority overall.
And so Matthew ends ‑‑ I love the Great Commission. I think it sums up so much, and it will lead into our discussion of discipleship. It ends with Jesus on a mountain. Like Moses went on a mountain, Jesus has been on a mountain regularly throughout the gospel of Matthew. The mountain is an important setting. You know, in Matthew 4, he’s on a mountain with Satan, and he’s offered all the kingdoms of the earth, and he rejects them. And then Matthew 5, he goes up on a mountain again to talk about his kingdom, the kingdom that he is actually representing and he does actually bring, and it’s the Sermon on the Mount. But then you keep reading. He tells his disciples to be the light on ‑‑ or the city that’s on the mountain, you know, the city on a hill, but it’s the same Greek word as mountain. He goes back up on the mountain again in the transfiguration, where he is literally compared to Moses and Elijah and is shown to be superior to them. The Mount of Olives is where he goes before he is arrested.
And then the final verses of Matthew, he’s back up on a mountain and he is worshiped while he’s on that mountain. The disciples gather and worship with him, which, you know, if you’re comparing him to Moses, Moses went up on a mountain, but Moses wasn’t worshiped there; God is the one worshiped on the mountain. So Jesus is on the mountain, he’s being worshiped, and then he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” which is something that can only be true of God, and it’s with the supreme authority of the divine being himself that Jesus offers the commission to go out and to make disciples.
So I think all of that is kind of Matthew’s way of demonstrating that the whole story of Israel has been leading to Jesus and is fulfilled in Jesus. And he comes not only as a great Moses or a great son of David or Israel, but as the embodiment of God himself, with all authority to cause us to go out and to transform the lives of people into becoming followers and disciples of his.
WES: Yeah, yeah. Amen. Well, it’s such a wonderful way that you’ve laid everything out, and I just feel like studying the gospel accounts is so important for Christians. I laugh because that should be obvious, I think. But I think back to growing up and, you know, what I heard in church, or just the impression that I got ‑‑ I don’t know that anyone ever said anything like this, but I just think I got the impression that what really mattered was the death of Jesus, and we spent, it seems like, very little time talking about who is Jesus, his life, the way that he lived his life during those 33 years, the things that he actually taught us to do.
I think what seems to get emphasized ‑‑ this is what Scot McKnight calls “the gospel of sin management.” That may not be original to him, but that idea that all that really matters is that Jesus was perfect, Jesus died on the cross to save us, and now you should read the epistles and do those things there and not do the bad things. And going back to who is Jesus and what did he teach us to do, how did he teach us to live is so fundamental. If we’re going to be, as you said, transformed into the image of our teacher, into the image of our rabbi, we have to know what he did, how he lived his life, and the things that he has taught us to do.
So let’s talk about that idea of discipleship, and specifically to the gospel of Matthew, how does Matthew give us a unique perspective on what it means and looks like to be a disciple?
TRAVIS: Well, one of the reasons that I wanted us to get to that mountaintop scene at the end of the gospel of Matthew with the Great Commission is because Jesus is very explicit there about what discipleship is. He says, “Make disciples of all the nations.” So if Jesus has all authority, then that means even though there’s other kings and governors and things like that throughout the world, there’s all kinds of nations ‑‑ ever since the promise given to Abraham, there has been this vision of the nations uniting together with Israel under the one true king, and Jesus is now that king, the one with all authority. That’s the way a king speaks. So he says, “Go into all the nations and make disciples,” and then he follows that with two essential parts of making disciples, one of which is baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which, again, if you’re looking at clues to the divine identity of Jesus, he’s on a mountain, he’s being worshiped, he has all authority in heaven and earth, and he is named with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the baptismal formula.
So anyway, you have this description of baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but then he says, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and I’ll be with you always, even to the end of the age.” I think that final phrase, “I’ll be with you always,” is really important for discipleship, also, to know that we’re not doing this alone, that we’re not on our own. It connects back to the first fulfilled passage in Matthew. It’s from Isaiah 7:14, where he’s given the name Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” And I think, from the beginning, we’re told Jesus is God with us. At the end, we get this picture of him divine, on a mountain, saying, “and I will be with you always,” and there are a couple of clues in Matthew as to how he’s with us.
For example, in Matthew 18, you have Jesus saying, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in your midst.” Like, he’s with us in the community of believers. You see that again in Matthew 25, where he separates the sheep and the goats, and he says, “When I was naked, you clothed me. When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was in prison, you visited me.” And they’re like, “When did we do this?” And he says, “As much as you did it to the least of these, my brothers, you’ve done it to me.” And so how is Jesus with us? Well, in one way, he’s with us through the community and he’s a part of the community with us.
But all of that is to say discipleship is something that we need to remember is done with the community and is done with Jesus. Very difficult to do on our own, and we’re not called to do it on our own. We’re called to be a city on a hill, not an individual standing up on a nice hill. But he does mention that it is baptism and then teaching to observe all that Jesus says, and so disciples are baptized people who followed the teachings of Jesus and practiced them.
So when you conclude with those words, what the reader is encouraged to do is to think, okay, so what did Jesus command? And so you go back to the beginning of Matthew and you read it again, this time paying attention to what types of things did Jesus say. And if I’m supposed to observe all that Jesus has said, well, it’s gonna make the Sermon on the Mount a really important part of discipleship. It’s gonna make Matthew 10, the second major speech, a really important part of discipleship, Matthew 13, Matthew 18 about forgiveness and about little ones versus great ones in the kingdom. Like, humility is going to become an essential part of discipleship.
And I think it’s important that Jesus was not just some armchair theologian who sat there and spoke the words of the Sermon on the Mountain and said go do it. If a disciple is someone who learns but also imitates, it’s important to know that Jesus not only taught, but also did. And so when Jesus says things like, “You’ve heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, if someone slaps you on the cheek, turn the other to him also. If someone sues you for your cloak, give him your tunic, also. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two” ‑‑ you keep reading Matthew, and every one of those things Jesus says, he also does. He is literally slapped on the face. He is literally taken to court unjustly. His clothes are literally taken from him by his enemies. He is literally forced to march by Roman armies. It’s like Jesus ‑‑ I think that’s intentional, that the things Jesus teaches are also the things he does.
So if we’re gonna be disciples, we gotta go back through and see what he teaches and look at his life and see what he does, and his life leads him to the cross, and it’s no accident that he tells us, if we’re going to follow him, we have to carry our cross. A lot of times following Jesus leads to uncomfortable places. It leads to death. And, I mean, I’m reminded of Bonhoeffer’s words in The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” and those are powerful words, but, really, that’s the call of discipleship, to completely lose yourself in following Jesus wherever that takes you.
WES: Yeah. Well, there’s so much in Matthew, as you’ve pointed out, about his authority, about obedience, about doing what he tells us to do as a king ‑‑ as you would expect a king to do, would be to tell us what to do and how to live our lives. So I think that that brings up an interesting question, too, is just about obedience. In fact, you said it really well in your book. You said, “Obedience is critical, but not central. Jesus’ obedience is central.” So what did you mean by that? What does that mean, and why is it important to kind of keep in our minds that we have to be obedient to the teachings of Jesus, but it isn’t our obedience, our obedience to do all of these things and don’t do all of these things, that actually saves us.
TRAVIS: Yeah. So, honestly, that’s tough sometimes. When you’re reading the gospel of Matthew or you’re reading the book of Romans, like even the way they use the word righteousness, it’s not quite the same. You know, in Matthew, righteousness is something, like, you do, you know? Fasting and praying and giving in Matthew 6 are all called ways of practicing righteousness, and we’re told that our righteousness needs to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. And so it sure sounds like, man, if I’m going to be a righteous person, I have to do all of this stuff.
But then you read Romans, and righteousness is like ‑‑ “There’s none that’s righteous, no not one,” and righteousness is a gift from God to those who place their faith or allegiance ‑‑ I’ll probably borrow the word allegiance a couple times in my answer from Matthew Bates. He has some excellent books on understanding faith in the New Testament. But when you give your faith to Christ, righteousness is a gift from God that you can’t attain on your own. So what do we do with that? And I think one direction people have taken it is to devalue the significance of obedience, and I don’t think that’s the right path.
When you read Matthew, like at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has this comparison between the wise man and the foolish man, these two builders. And who is the wise one? He actually hears and does what Jesus says. So the Sermon on the Mount is not just for us to memorize or to learn or to see essential truths that would be great if someone did them sometime. It’s not just a picture of what heaven’s going to be like. You know, some have suggested the Sermon on the Mount is this glorified demonstration of what God actually expects, and what you’re supposed to do is read it, recognize how short you fall, and then thank God for his grace, you know? And I think that’s gonna happen, sure, but that’s not the purpose of it. The purpose of it is for you to actually do it. You know, that’s how Jesus ends it. And so our obedience is absolutely critical. You have to obey Jesus if he’s actually your king, and I think that putting your faith in Jesus is more than just a mental assent to a couple of facts about him. It’s actually pledging your allegiance and fidelity and faithfulness to him throughout life, and that will include your heart and your mind and your body. And that’s so much of what Jesus is trying to do, is he’s trying to unite those things so that not only do you not commit adultery with your body, you don’t lust in your heart. Jesus wants all of it in obedience to him, and so obedience is absolutely critical.
However, the reality is I have not fully obeyed the Sermon on the Mount, and that’s going to be a constant struggle. That’s going to be a constant ‑‑ I’ll be grappling with that my entire life. And so what is my hope of salvation? Jesus, I don’t think, teaches the Sermon on the Mount and says, “And any mistake along the way will discount you from my kingdom.” In fact, right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, he offers this prayer where it describes, I think, some of the most important kingdom values, and in this prayer, he says, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
But that phrase right there about forgiveness, I think, is really important because it’s not the fact that I am perfect at following the Sermon on the Mount; it’s the fact that I’m forgiven when I fail to follow the Sermon on the Mount. And where does that forgiveness come from? Well, it comes from the fact that Jesus was perfect in following the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus actually did the things that he said and he did them perfectly so that Jesus, in loving his enemies, didn’t kill them or destroy them. He went to the cross for them. He tells us to love our enemies, but that’s not something he himself wouldn’t do. He not only loves his enemies, he went to the cross to die for the salvation of his enemies so that even me and you and all of us who fail to live up to his call can have hope in a God who loves even his enemies. He loves us and he saves us, and that’s why our obedience to Jesus as Lord is critical. If we’re going to say that he’s king, if we’re going to say that he’s Lord, we have to do what he says. But you will fail, and it’s the fact that he also loves his enemies, the fact that he also suffers for the good of others, the fact that he gave his life for us means that we can have hope and assurance of our standing before God even in spite of our failures.
WES: Yeah, yeah. I think that that word ‑‑ and I also really enjoy Matthew Bates’ work on that idea of allegiance and how that’s tied to the pistis in the New Testament, or faith. And, in fact, I’m preaching ‑‑ this whole year here at McDermott Road my theme is loving loyalty. I think words like loyalty and allegiance and faithfulness are so important. In fact, I started the year by introducing this idea, and I talked about how, as a husband, I am not a perfect husband. I said you can ask my wife and she’ll tell you that I’m not a perfect husband, but I am a faithful husband, and I have been faithful since the day we got married, but I have not been perfect.
And I think we understand that when it comes to marriage, that even if you look at our marriage vows ‑‑ I mean, I used 1 Corinthians 13, I think, probably in my marriage vows, but, you know, I made all of these promises to my wife about how I was going to love her and I was gonna do all of these things. Have I kept all of those promises to a T? Have I dotted every I and crossed every T? Have I been perfect in my obedience to those marriage vows? Well, probably not if you’re measuring it that way, but I have been faithful. I’ve been a faithful husband. In fact, my youngest son was a little appalled that I would claim to be faithful, and I said, no, no, no, we should be able to say that, to say, I’ve been faithful to my promises, I’ve been faithful to my spouse, my wife.
And I think the same should be able to be said about God, that we have been faithful to God. We have been ‑‑ I think there were so many Israelites who could have said that, who were faithful to Yahweh. None of them were perfect except Jesus, but they were faithful to Yahweh. The vast majority, of course, were
not just not perfect, they were also not faithful, and Jesus calls us to faithfulness, to loyalty, to allegiance. And does that include obedience? Absolutely it does. But he understands that we’re not perfect. He is merciful. He’s gracious. He’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This is the way God has always been.
But I think that we ‑‑ as you said, we go so far ‑‑ I used to listen to a lot of reformed, Calvinist type of teaching that literally teach about the Sermon on the Mount, that that should be your reaction, is read it and say, oh, what a sinner I am, and then just be grateful that Jesus has saved you without any implication. No, no, no. Now it’s time to go to work and be obedient to the teachings of Jesus. And this is actually ‑‑ if we’re going to take Jesus seriously, we have to not only take him seriously when he offers to die for us and to cleanse us of our sins, but we also have to take him seriously when he says build your life on my teachings, go and obey everything I’ve taught you to do and teach others to do the same thing. So it’s both. It is yes, we are forgiven because we’re imperfect, but we’re also called to a life of faithful obedience in Christ.
TRAVIS: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And yeah, it’s like you get to the end of the Sermon on the Mount and it’s a call to go and do it. You get to the end of the gospel of Matthew as a whole, defining what discipleship is, it’s a call to observe all the things that he has commanded. So like doing is essential, but then, as you read through it, you get to Matthew 18, where you have this guy who owes this debt, can never in a million years repay, and the king forgives him of it. I mean, so forgiveness is absolutely a part of the system because that’s who God is and it’s why we should forgive other people, because we’re supposed to be demonstrating to the world around us who God is. That’s why you obey. I mean, you don’t obey because God is in need and he can’t make things work in this world without us. God can do what God wants to do, but our commission is to show people who God is, and forgiveness is an essential part of that. So that should motivate us to be forgiving people, but also it ought to thrill us and fill us with joy that we serve a forgiving God.
And so, yeah, you’re not gonna perfectly embody the Sermon on the Mount. You won’t be the perfect husband. You won’t be the perfect citizen. You won’t be the perfect follower of Jesus, but you can be forgiven. And like you said ‑‑ and I think that’s a great distinction, you can be faithful. He can know that your allegiance is with him even with your failures. It’s the progression of your life, you know? The commitment you’ve made in the progression of your life into discipleship and into following him, I think, is what defines our allegiance and our faithfulness.
WES: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let’s kind of switch gears a little bit, but still on the topic of the Great Commission, there is this commission that Jesus gives his followers at the end of this gospel account to go into all the world, to make disciples, but at the same time, you make the point in your book that following Jesus, specifically following his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, is not about changing the world for Jesus. I think sometimes we’ve gotten it into our head that our job as the church or our job as Christians is to go and make the world a better place, that we’re supposed to force our neighbors to follow Jesus, to implement strategies or to implement policies that reflect God’s will and to make the world more obedient to God because we’re Christians. So what’s the distinction there? How do we distinguish between being salt and light and making disciples, but at the same time recognizing that our job is not to take the world over and make it better for Jesus? That’s not what the Sermon on the Mount’s about.
TRAVIS: Yeah. So I think that’s a really good question, and it is a question that ‑‑ the answer, I don’t think, is what I want the answer to be. Sometimes I want the answer to be, no, Jesus tells you that if you turn the other cheek, that your enemy will be so impressed by your kindness and your meekness that he’ll say, you know what? I shouldn’t hit this person again. In fact, what I should do is ask this person, why are you the way that you are? And I could tell them, well, the reason I’m this way is because of Jesus. And they could say, well, tell me more about Jesus. Like I hope that happens, and that might happen. That type of thing can happen and that type of thing has happened. But it’s also very likely you’re just going to get hit again and then mocked for being so foolish, and following Jesus opens you up to that.
Jesus was ridiculed. Jesus was mocked. There were a lot of people who, instead of following Jesus or being so impressed by the life of Jesus, they absolutely rejected it, and that’s one of the reasons why the cross is such an offense. You know, we’ve had 2,000 years to get used to the idea of the cross, but when Paul’s out evangelizing, teaching the message of self‑sacrifice for others, teaching the message that the Messiah, the king of all, gave his life on a cross, it was foolishness to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews, but to those of us who are called, it’s the power and the wisdom of God. We see something different in that than other people do.
And so what that means is, by embodying the message of the cross, we very well may simply be opening ourselves up to persecution or to mockery or to look like fools for the sake of Christ. But our goal is not to only do the things that will transform the world. A lot of things we do might not transform the world. If our goal was to transform the world, that would open up the door to leaving the teachings of Jesus behind and simply going with what works. You know, trying to be very pragmatic, trying to think, well, this will have an impact, that won’t have an impact, so I’ll do this and not that, and that’s not the way Jesus wants us to think about this. Jesus gives us things that might work in some instances, but very often won’t. And when it doesn’t, he says rejoice anyway that you’ve been considered worthy to be persecuted. You know, blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
But I think our mission in the things Jesus says is not about pragmatism and it’s not about if we do this, then everyone will be so impressed that they’ll become followers of Jesus. Rather, I think what it is is to represent God and his faithfulness and his goodness into a world that’s lacking it, and that’s what it means to be the salt of the earth, to be the light of the world, to be a city on a hill.
You can do a lot with coercion and force. People have. Like, there have been massive changes in this world because of coercion, force, violence, and all of that. But that’s not ‑‑ our job is not transformation by whatever means necessary. Our job is to follow Jesus, to show the world who God is. Why do we love our enemies? It might not change our enemies, but he says, “Love your enemies that you may be sons of your Father who’s in heaven, who causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and the sun to shine on the good and the evil.” When you look at that, it’s saying the reason you do it is because that’s who God is. He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Like, why are we peacemakers? So that we can be children of God, we can be like God. And so when we are peacemakers, when we love our enemies, I don’t know what it will do to others. I hope and pray that it will change them, but even Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, God gives the increase.” If there is change, that’s what God does.
In Matthew 13, Jesus gives a parable about the wheat and the tares, or the wheat and the weeds. And there’s the question, should we go pull up all the weeds? It’s like, no, that’s not what you do. You be wheat. You be the best wheat that you can be. You be a faithful presence. You show the world a better way. You be a kingdom of priests. You be a holy and royal nation. Like, you represent God’s goodness to the world, but God’s the one who will change the world, and that’s the hope that we live with, that there will be a day when the angels come and they separate the wheat and the weeds.
So I think the Sermon on the Mount is giving us something that, yes, hopefully, prayerfully, people will see it and be transformed. I think Christianity has done a tremendous amount of good in this world, and I think it has made changes, so praise God for that. But my goal is not to change the world by any means necessary because that can open up the door to a lot of things that Jesus didn’t say. Jesus gives me a way of transforming my life into conformity with the image and the will of God, and if I do that, then hopefully people will see the goodness of God in me and in the community of faith. Whether or not they change, that’s God’s business and that’s their business, but I’m supposed to be faithful regardless.
WES: Yeah. Yeah, and I love how you put it in the book, that I don’t know if it will change others, but I know that it will change us, that it will change you to be obedient to Jesus. It does change us. And it’s interesting; we live in a time right now that’s kind of interesting to watch, where religious people, even those who claim to be followers of Jesus, are making claims that, well, turning the other cheek ‑‑ and, for some reason, that always gets used, even those words ‑‑ “Turning the other cheek used to work, or it worked at one time, but it doesn’t work anymore, so now is not the time to turn the other cheek. Now is the time to do these other things.” And like you said, we can’t accomplish the will of Jesus by abandoning the way of Jesus. We can’t find a different way to live our lives and to function in the world and think that we’re accomplishing the will of Jesus. The will of Jesus is for us to be obedient, is for us to be faithful and to do what he said regardless, and, as you said, to look at the life of Jesus and then his apostles and the first 200 years of Christian history and think that, quote‑unquote, “it worked” to turn the other cheek back then, as if they weren’t persecuted, as if they weren’t thrown to the lions, as if they didn’t face all kinds of horrible persecution exactly as Jesus said that they would, and then to think that our world today is so much more hostile than their world that we can’t actually do what Jesus told us to do. It’s just ludicrous. But it’s really a misunderstanding, I think, of the entire gospel, of the cross itself, really.
TRAVIS: Well, I mean, like you said, if you read something Jesus says, step one, and then step two, you ask yourself, will this work, and how you answer that question depends on whether or not you’ll follow it, you’ve missed the boat entirely. The question is not will this work? The question is, is this faithful to Jesus?
WES: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I met a guy one time, he was a recent ‑‑ I want to say convert. He had recently been baptized, but I think that he’d kind of been rushed into baptism, maybe, I’m not sure. But he was a prison guard and he worked in a local prison, and then he had a Bible study with me to say, I’m kind of second‑guessing whether or not I want to be a Christian. In fact, he was toying with the idea of being a Muslim because he was listening to the words of Jesus, and he said, I work in a violent environment with lots of criminals and this turning the other cheek and loving your enemies, I just don’t know that I can buy into that. And I thought this might be the most intellectually honest reason for rejecting Jesus that I’ve ever heard.
And at the end of the day, I just have to present Jesus, and whether or not he accepts him ‑‑ I can’t say, well, if you don’t like that version of Jesus, here’s a different version of Jesus that you might appreciate more, or, hey, if you give this a try, it might work for you. Jesus is really, really honest about this is going to get you in a lot of trouble, and if you’re not ready to pick up your cross and follow me, if you’re not ready to die for me, then don’t become my disciple. And the fact that we have sort of buried Jesus’ teachings about what it actually looks like to be a follower of Jesus and haven’t put those out front, I think goes to show that we’ve had a different approach to making Christians while maybe not making disciples.
TRAVIS: I think that’s a good distinction. I’ve had a situation where there’s someone I was studying with who’s not a believer, and it was interesting. It wasn’t like the miracles were the problem with coming to faith. It was an atheist. It wasn’t like the flood ‑‑ even this person said there was probably a flood. It was just interesting, like some of the things that they were willing to accept, but it was reading the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus saying love your enemies and Jesus saying do not resist the evil person, and they’re like that’s ludicrous. You can’t live in a world like that. Evil people will just run amok all over the place. And you’re tempted to say, well, Jesus doesn’t really mean that, but as soon as you start changing what Jesus says to make his message more palatable, you’re not creating disciples of Jesus. You’re creating disciples of a culture that thinks this will work well or you’re creating disciples of yourself.
So much of the history of interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount ‑‑ and I think we see it a lot today, and it’s something that I try to not do in the book, but we’ll see how good I do. But so much of the history is a history of just trying to find creative ways to get around the teachings of Jesus. How can we love our enemies? Well, okay, you love your enemies. Well, who are my enemies? Well, that’s not applying to politics. That’s not applying to foreigners. That’s not applying if you’re in this career. That doesn’t apply if you’re ‑‑ and it’s like, man, okay, I don’t know, maybe. But instead of reading the Sermon on the Mount trying to find as few ways as possible to apply it, what if we really grappled with, what if I applied it here? What if I applied it to this person? What if I applied it to this political party? What if I applied it in a time of war? Would that change who I am? And I wish we would seek to apply it more and at least be willing to admit where we fall short rather than try to change what Jesus says to make it so easy that it doesn’t impact our lives.
One of the things that you’ll see as you read the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus will often compare his teaching to just what other folk do. He’s like, “Your righteousness should exceed the scribes and Pharisees.” He says, about greeting those who greet you, “Don’t the Gentiles do the same?” He says, “Don’t the tax collectors do the same?” He says, “Don’t offer long prayers the way the Gentiles do.” Like so many of the teachings are rooted in this idea that there’s a surpassing righteousness, something that’s different than the culture. So if we then interpret loving your enemies to mean, you know, don’t kill the guy down the street who wronged you, well, okay, but everyone agrees you shouldn’t do that. You know, if you say, it’s okay to kill provided you have a good reason, well, then, that’s ‑‑ again, everyone agrees with that. Jesus is calling us to something that not everyone agrees with, and if your intuitions feel that it’s wrong, you might be right. Maybe Jesus is saying something that we will have an initial visceral reaction to. It will not sit well with us. In fact, if Jesus isn’t doing that, then it’s likely that it’s not actually Jesus you’re listening to anymore.
WES: Yeah, yeah. And I think about how many things Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that apply to so many different people in so many different situations with so many different perspectives, especially today. We’ve talked a lot about loving your enemies, but we could also talk about sexual immorality and how Jesus says, hey, it’s better to pluck your eye out or cut your hand off than it is to go into hell with all of your parts.
TRAVIS: Yeah, there’s a thousand other things. Yeah.
WES: And so to take Jesus seriously on that is just as radical in our culture today. But, again, I hear Christian religious people discussing what does the Bible say about sexual immorality or what does it say about sexual ethics? And we debate a lot about, well, what does Romans 1 mean or what does 1 Corinthians mean? And we talk a lot about Paul, and people will even make the claim that, well, Jesus was for loving everyone and Jesus wouldn’t be for coming down hard on sexual sin, and it’s like, wait, have you read the Sermon on the Mount, either? And there’s so much there that applies to all of us if we take it seriously.
TRAVIS: Yeah, lust itself ‑‑ before you even get to what things people are doing, lust itself, he says, is something that you should be lopping off limbs for. And so it goes to show that Jesus ‑‑ when it comes to money, you know, it’s hard to take seriously what he says about money. When he says, “Do not store up for yourself treasure on earth,” I wish he would say, like, “Do not greedily store up for yourself treasure on earth,” because then I could just say, okay, so as long as you do it without greed, you’re good, or you could take what he says and you could find some angle to make it a lot easier to accept. But, really, I think if you’re storing up for yourself treasure on earth, a responsibility comes with that to be giving that treasure away, and so there are a lot of ways that we can read what Jesus says, whether it’s sexual ethics, whether it is wealth, whether it is anger.
There’s actually a funny thing in the history of translation ‑‑ or of the copying of the Sermon on the Mount, where a phrase gets added to what he says about anger. Where he says, “I say to you not to be angry with your brother,” and it adds the phrase “without cause.” That’s in some of the manuscripts, and it’s not in the earliest ones, but eventually that got added, and it’s really easy to see why because, you know, you can see, you know, don’t be angry, but, dude, there’s some reasons you gotta get angry at someone, and so we need to just kind of lessen it a little bit. But then you ask the question, well, everyone agrees you can be angry with cause. If there’s a good enough cause, that wouldn’t separate you from the scribes and Pharisees or from anyone. Everyone would agree with that.
And so, yeah, you go through, and whether it’s divorce, oaths ‑‑ that’s a tough one because, you know, how often do we add to our “yes” and “no” in order to make ourselves sound more credible? And what Jesus wants us to do is don’t add more words to your “yes” and “no.” Instead, live a life of credibility. That’s a lot harder. It takes a lot longer. But you should live in such a way that people will hear your “yes” and it will sound the same as if you said, “Upon the life of my children, I give my oath.” You know, you don’t need to add all those words if you’re actually living with the type of integrity that Jesus is calling us to have.
But it applies to a lot of areas, and there’s nothing I read in the Sermon on the Mount and I walk away thinking, whew, okay, I got that one mastered. It’s like every time I read it, I end up recognizing, okay, there’s more to being a follower of Jesus than what I’m comfortable with.
WES: Yeah. And it goes back to what you said a minute ago, that we find all kinds of creative ways of getting around what Jesus says, and we say, well, you know, that’s obviously hyperbole. He doesn’t really want us to cut our hand off or pluck our eye out. And I would say I agree. I agree; it’s hyperbole. But I always use as an example, if I tell you that it’s raining cats and dogs outside, and you say, well, that’s just ‑‑ that’s a figure of speech; you don’t mean that literally, and then you go outside as if it’s not raining at all, then you’ve made a huge error in how you’ve interpreted what I’m saying. So yes, you’re right, it is a figure of speech, but you’re wrong to dismiss it as if a figure of speech or a metaphor or a hyperbole doesn’t actually mean something important. In fact, sometimes we use those kinds of hyperboles or metaphors or figures of speech because a plain, just surface‑level, very basic way of saying it wouldn’t capture how important and significant this is.
TRAVIS: Yeah. Hyperbole means that a truth has been exaggerated. It doesn’t mean that you’ve said something false, you know? And I think that’s a really good illustration with the cats and dogs. But, yeah, so Jesus says, you know, plucking out eyes and chopping off hands ‑‑ okay, the early church wasn’t literally doing that. But the question you should ask, okay, what have you actually sacrificed? What have you amputated or gotten rid of to get rid of lust? I know a lot of people ‑‑ you walk around with a smartphone in your pocket, you have access to pornography 24/7. Okay. Would you be willing to live without that? Is that something you could amputate for the kingdom? Is that something you could get rid of?
You know, I think the idea of giving up things for the kingdom because the sacrifice you make now is far less damaging than hell will be, then those are sacrifices we need to make. But a lot of times, if we think it’s hyperbole, we think, okay, so you shouldn’t lust, and we just kind of walk away. But we don’t really think about the sacrifice that ‑‑ or I don’t want to say “we” don’t ‑‑ some people do ‑‑ but it’s common or easy to not do that.
WES: Yeah. Well, I think that that leads really well to our last question, and that is, why is it worth it? If following Jesus really does demand sacrifice, if it does demand, at the worst, taking up our cross literally and dying for Jesus, if it calls us to this life of self‑sacrifice, if it calls us to not store up treasures on earth, to even hyperbolically cut off our hand and pull out our eye ‑‑ if that’s the life that Jesus calls us to, then why is it worth it, and how can we present it to other people in a beautiful and compelling way? How do we become disciples, and how do we convince others to become disciples if it really is so costly?
TRAVIS: Well, I don’t think it’ll be easy, but I do think there are a couple of things to keep in mind as you consider why you follow Jesus, and one of those ‑‑ and this isn’t maybe the most exciting one, but the fact that it’s just true, Jesus really is ‑‑ like God really did come to earth. Jesus really is Lord. You know, when we talk about the gospel ‑‑ maybe it was N.T. Wright who said something like the gospel is not the good suggestion or the good invitation or the good advice. It’s the good news, and the news is declaring something that is true. Jesus really is Lord. And so if you care about doing what’s right and what’s true in the world, then it does matter.
But secondly, I would say that truth can really be good and beautiful. That truth of what Jesus says, it takes perhaps a tremendous amount of faith to see it, but it really is a more beautiful world when we love our enemies rather than wanting to destroy them, or it really is a more beautiful world when, instead of thinking how much wealth can I accumulate for myself, I put my trust in God and I store up my treasure in heaven, which I think actually is a reference to using your wealth for the good of others and for the poor. It really is a more beautiful world, and I think we see that when we see acts of generosity. We appreciate those. And when we see stories of forgiveness, we appreciate it. We can see beauty in that. And Jesus is calling us to live in a kingdom that is not defined by violence, the accumulation of wealth, by hatred, by power, by rising up in status, but rather it’s a kingdom where the least are the greatest and the last is first, and not everyone finds beauty in that. You know, there are some who famously think that that will lead to absolute chaos and the weakness of humanity, but I believe there’s beauty in that, and it’s something that the more we see it, I think the better things are.
But even with those things, Jesus is specifically asked that question by Peter. This is at the end of Matthew 19. Peter is saying, Lord, we’ve left everything for you. Like, is this worth it? And Jesus gives an answer, and it’s an answer that contains truth and it’s an answer that contains beauty, but it’s also an answer that contains hope. He says that there’s nobody who, having given up family or possessions or the farms or all these things for the kingdom who will not receive back a hundred times more so in the regeneration or in the new world. And he says when that day comes, you will receive so much more, including eternal life.
And I think ‑‑ I think, even now, it’s like when you look at the church family, when you look at the community of Christ, I have more mothers and I have more brothers and sisters. I have family and I have community, and that’s something that makes the suffering worth it. When you suffer alone, there’s something tragic about that and there’s something in that that makes it really hard to continue on, but when you suffer and when you make sacrifices as part of a community for the common good with other people who are doing the same, then you have a fellowship in that and a sharing in that that is transformative for yourself and for that community. And like we’ve talked about, maybe sometimes, in the world around us, that that’s something we pray for.
I remember years ago, living in Monroe, Louisiana, there was a flood that came and it flooded our house, and my wife Lauren was pregnant at the time and we ended up having to leave our house, but you know who we left with? Some members of the church came and we were able to walk in waist‑deep water from our house to the nearest road. They had a car waiting for us. They took us to their house and we stayed with them for several days. And then we had to get some things fixed on our house and we stayed with other members of the church. We had a church that we didn’t even ‑‑ we’d never even gone to before sent us money to help with some of the repairs. There were people that we knew who were family; there were people who we didn’t know who were family. And my family was also very kind to us, but we didn’t live near any of my family. My family didn’t live in Louisiana, but we were still surrounded by family. And I think following Jesus creates a community of family, and that’s the type of thing that can help you overcome so many of the obstacles of this life.
Plus, finally, the resurrection and the new world. There’s a new world coming. There’s a regeneration, and the resurrection really is why doing what is true and beautiful matters. The resurrection is really why it matters that Jesus is Lord, because the suffering we have in this life, I mean, to use the words of Paul, wouldn’t be worth it if there weren’t something eternal and true on the other side. He says we would be, of all people, most pitied.
And so I think the reason we do this, it is with hope and with trust that what God says will come about, and that’s why the gospel of Matthew ‑‑ we are called to carry our cross, and the Sermon on the Mount does take Jesus to the cross, but that’s not where the gospel ends. The gospel ends with the resurrected Lord being worshiped on a mountain with all authority in heaven and on earth. The story ends with a commission to go out and to find, within all of the nations, those who will be disciples of the one true king and those who will give their allegiance to him. The resurrection is where the whole story culminates.
So like Philippians 2, Jesus was equal with God, and yet he “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, he took the form of a servant, he came in the appearance of human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God highly exalted him and bestowed upon him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of the glory of God the Father.” The one who humbles himself will be exalted.
There is a tremendous amount of humility that comes in following Jesus. You can’t put yourself first, but God will see, he will exalt, he will raise you up, and I think that makes it worth it.
WES: Yeah, absolutely. Amen, Brother. I love the already and the not yet of what you’re saying, Brother. Thank you. Thank you for this conversation. Thank you for your book. I can’t wait for other people to read it. It’s fantastic. And thank you most of all for your work in the kingdom, Brother.
TRAVIS: Thank you so much, and thank you for reading the book and for giving me your thoughts. Thank you for this opportunity. I love the work that you do. I love your podcast. I love your books and your writing. You’ve had a positive impact on my life and my ministry, and it means a whole lot.
WES: Thanks, Brother.
Thank you so much for listening to the Radically Christian Bible Study Podcast. If you have just a moment, we would love for you to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you’re listening. It really does help more people discover this content. I also want to thank our guests who join me each week; Beth Tabor, who volunteers her time to transcribe this podcast; and our whole McDermott Road Church family who make it possible for us to provide this Bible study for you. Now let’s all go out and love like Jesus.
The post What Does Matthew Teach Us About Discipleship? with Travis Bookout appeared first on Radically Christian.
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