Can a Label Solve an Identity Crisis?
by Eli Levi.

In my first lecture I talked about how the Jews could not find themselves within the Church because they always felt like strangers there and they wanted to be connected to their origin as Jews. When the Jews went to the Church the continuity from Abraham on was broken, because the Church forbade them to be Jews. They told them: “Now that you have converted to Christianity you cannot continue being Jewish.” But do you know what? None of the Apostles has ever converted to Christianity. And so we have a Messianic movement; we call ourselves Messianic Jews and we go to Messianic congregations. In other words: We took care of the label. If you say “Messianic” it means that you are not Christian, it means that you are a Jew that believes in Jesus. The question is: Can that label and just the use of that label provide us with all we need to feel good with who we are and what our identity is? Can we just use the word “Jew” in our different titles and continue to conduct our lives as Protestant Christians? For many years most of the Messianic congregations were Messianic just because their sign said “Messianic”. But if you walked off the street into a meeting you wouldn’t know the difference whether you are in a Protestant service or in a Jewish Messianic meeting. In a lot of places they started playing with Jewish symbols without even knowing how to use them, especially in America. They were meeting at 7 or 8 p.m. on Friday night and they were lighting the Shabbat candles, long after the Shabbat had entered, at a time you are not supposed to light fire. Then they were doing the Kiddush, but they were mixing between the Kiddush and the Lord’s Supper. You cannot take the Lord’s Supper with a Hallah (the Shabbat bread). The Lord’s Supper should be taken with unleavened bread. It has a great symbolic meaning why unleavened bread should be taken. Do you remember when Paul says if you put a drop of yeast in a lump of dough the whole dough will sour? The soured dough and the leaven are a symbol of sin. But our Lord and Savior was sinless, and this is depicted by the bread without yeast. I think that traditionally we should keep those things, because they are Jewish.

Now, the reason why believing Jews want to be Messianic Jews is to declare that we are Jews who did not convert to Christianity. We are Jews that accept our Jewish Messiah the way God intended it, because we identify with our Messiah who lived as a Jew and the Apostles who lived as Jews. So the whole idea behind believing in Jesus as Jews is being connected to the continuity of Judaism. This is what I think should be the reason to have a Messianic movement. If not, we should just feel at home in a Protestant congregation, because you can say “Hallelujah, Amen” anywhere, whether you are in a Methodist, Baptist or Lutheran, any church you want. But if we want to be like those who started this movement – the Apostles who studied under the Messiah Himself, because that is our continuity, we need to look at how they lived their lives. If we look at Jesus Himself He observed Judaism through and through – He was circumcised on the eighth day, He celebrated His Bar Mitzva (remember when His parents lose Him on His way home) and He kept the Shabbat religiously. Even after He was resurrected from the dead He kept the Shabbat. Now you think that the Messiah who was in the body of a regular man and died and later when He was resurrected and in a new body – the heavenly body – would not have to keep the law, yet He does keep it. Open your Bible to Acts 1:12. I am starting with this example on purpose. So the Apostles were over there saying good bye to Jesus, and He is going up to the heavens, and they started coming back to the city from the Mount of Olives. The text says: “And they did not go beyond what was allowed to go on a Shabbat day.” So we learn a few things here: The first thing is: If you did not know on which day Jesus went to heaven, now you know – on a Shabbat. Second: Here is the Messiah, the Son of God, resurrected from the dead, and He is not allowing the Apostles to go beyond what is allowed to go on a Shabbat. Interesting, isn’t it? It did not happen by chance that He did not go further than what He was allowed. When we go to Matthew 5:20 we see that Jesus is telling the believers again: “If you are not going to be more righteous than the Pharisees then you are not going to enter the kingdom of heaven.” If you are not going to be more righteous than the Pharisees – How did the Pharisees obtain their righteousness? By practicing the law. So if we as believers want to do God’s will, how do we know what God’s will is? This applies especially to those of us who do not have the red telephone to talk with God directly. How do we know what God’s will is? God’s will is the commandments. You can’t get away with it. All the commandments we have in the Bible are based on the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of all the commandments of God. And even as Gentiles we know that we have to keep all of them. We can argue about the Shabbat, but if you are a follower of Jesus you cannot take any shortcut on any of the other commandments. Put the Shabbat aside for a moment, what other things from the Ten Commandments are we free not to do? None!

Nowadays in the Gentile world you have two days off in the week: Saturday and Sunday. You get those days off because of the Jews. You get the Shabbat because God told the Jews to keep it and you get the Sunday because Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday. So it’s all because of the Jews. But the truth is that if there was not the consent of having a day of rest in the cycle of seven days, we would be working seven days a week. So, maybe, you do not keep the Shabbat like the Jews – you might light fire and you drive your cars on the Shabbat, but you still enjoy having that day off, right? So in a certain way you do keep it. You may not keep it all the way, but nobody does that anyway. That is why we have this Book. If you want to know God’s will, it’s in there. God’s will does not grow on trees. You cannot understand it through osmosis, you’ve got to study it, and this is where it is. But do you know what happens? We do not like to take the time to study God’s will, but the less we know what is written here the more ignorant we are about God’s will. I will tell you a story. A few years ago there was a Jewish man whom I baptized. I studied with him and baptized him, and as I got to know him, he said to me: “I’m married and my wife is from Finland. A few years ago she took the children and went away to Finland, and she doesn’t want to come back.” I asked him: “Why don’t you divorce her?” He said: “I don’t want to divorce her.” And I asked him: “What about her?” He answered: “She doesn’t want to divorce me either.” So, I asked him to give me her phone number, I would call her. When I called her I introduced myself and I asked her: “If you don’t want to divorce your husband and he doesn’t want to divorce you, why don’t you come back and live with him?” She said: “I’m going to do it when God tells me to do it.” This is a great answer, isn’t it? You can get away from everything with such an answer. I told her: “If I prove to you in this phone call that God wants you to return to Israel now, would you?” She said “Maybe.” So I asked her: “What does the Bible say: Where is the place of the woman?” She said: “The place of the woman is with her husband.” I asked her: “Where is your husband?” She answered: “In Israel.” “So, what are you doing in Finland?” But I told her: “You know, I can understand you being hesitant. Why don’t you leave your kids with your parents in Finland for a week to come and spend a week with your husband after four years that you have not been together and check it out?” She came to Israel for a week. Afterwards she went back to Finland. Then she was back in Israel with the kids, and they are still living together in Israel.

This is a good example. A lot of times we just do not want to do what we are supposed to do, and we say: “Oh, I will wait until God tells me”, knowing that God is not going to tell us, because God is not going to say everything to everybody on a personal level a hundred thousand times. God speaks once, and if you are following and believing in Him, then you know what He wants. Years ago I was guilty of the same thing. When I felt that God wanted me to leave the business that I was in, to leave everything and be in ministry, I did not want to, because I did not want to depend on a bunch of people who if they like me, they will support me and if not, they will stop supporting me. For a businessman that was too risky. Besides, I knew people in the church where I was who were begging to be in ministry and nothing was happening. They were not getting the chance to be in ministry. So seeing those guys I said: “Hey, I am going to be smart.” I went to God and said: “God, if you want me to be in ministry get somebody to ask me to be in ministry.” And I said to myself: "Who is going to ask me to be in ministry? People are waiting for years to be in ministry." But within a month it happened twice that people called me and asked me to be in ministry. So I knew I could not get away from it, I had to leave everything and give it a chance. Yes, it is easy to say: Let God tell me. It is a copout – in the same way that we go to someone and we tell him God told me so and so. It is not what God told you, it is what you want that person to do.

All of the Apostles lived as devout Jews even after knowing Jesus. Maybe sometimes we get the idea that Peter was a reformed Jew, that he was not that orthodox. And the example was that only because when he came to visit Paul before the brethren from Jerusalem came he sat and ate with the Gentiles, and when they came he no longer did that. So, in a way, we are led to believe that when Peter sat with the Gentiles and ate with them he ate non-kosher food. But there is not one place in the text that says he did not keep kosher. Of course it was a mistake on Peter’s side when the people from Jerusalem came to put the Gentiles aside and wanted to be with the others. He was wrong, but he did not do it out of meanness. I can prove this to you. How many of you travel abroad by yourselves? You can be in a foreign country, let’s say you are in Spain, and you are with Spanish people. You talk with them, you sit with them, and everything is all right. And then all of a sudden a couple from the United States walks in. What happens? You forget where you are, you forget the Spanish, you start speaking English and that’s it, right? This is a natural thing. Of course it is not sensitive and not polite either, because you offend the people you were with before your American friends came. And that is what Peter was guilty of. This is why Paul reprimanded him. He told him: “Until yesterday they were your buddies and you sat and talked with them, and today you don’t know them.” It has nothing to do with Judaism, nothing at all. Do you think Peter needed Paul to teach him how to be a Jew? If Peter was such a reformed, secular Jew, then let’s read Acts 3:1. What were they doing? Going to the Temple? For what? To visit the High Priest? No, they were going there because it was the time for the afternoon prayer. So, why does a Jew who is not that devout go to an afternoon prayer? Why doesn’t he take his afternoon rest? Because he is devout, because he is keeping the law. And in the process of going to prayer he even heals the crippled man. Now read verse 12 and 13. To you this text probably says nothing, but if you are a Jew and are familiar with Judaism and with the Jewish prayer book, you realize that in this text we are learning that Peter led the afternoon prayer, because we see the beginning of the liturgy from the prayer book. He tells the crowd: “People of Israel, why are you so amazed of the miracle with the cripple and why do you look at us as if we did it with our own power?” Then he says “The God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified ...” and instead of Messiah he switches there and says “servant”. From there you see that he starts the liturgy because that is how the prayers start. So don’t tell us that Peter was not a devout Jew who kept the law.

Now let’s move on to Paul. In the Christian world we are taught that Paul was against the law. But from all of the Apostles Paul was probably the most devout Jew and kept to Judaism more than the rest of them. But Paul had a problem. The biggest problem in Paul’s teaching was Gentiles who converted to Judaism, who then accepted Christ and were going all over the place and preaching that if you want to be saved, you have to convert to Judaism and then accept Jesus. Paul fought this all of his life. He did not want the Gentiles to feel that they have to convert to Judaism in order to be saved.

The first conference of believers in the history of the New Testament happened in Jerusalem in Acts 15, and the reason for this conference was the question of what to do with the Gentile believers. Because of the Judaizers the Jewish leadership of the body of Yeshua did not know or could not decide what to do with the Gentile problem. In that conference it is James who gets up and says: “Let’s not make it difficult for our Gentile brothers, let’s not make them fulfill everything as Jews.” Then he goes on and says: “Let’s ask them to abstain from eating blood, from animals that are strangled, from idolatry and fornication.” Now think about it – he is in a room full of Jews, and you think that he had a new idea, so he just stands up and everybody agrees? That would be completely out of character for a Jewish crowd. If it was a new idea that he introduced, it would have started the biggest argument ever. But James is talking about something that they all knew about. In Judaism they say that a Gentile can be righteous without converting to Judaism if he keeps the seven laws of Noah. There are not exactly seven laws, but they call it the “seven laws of Noah”. Now I am giving you some homework. Read the covenant that God makes with Noah when he leaves the Ark. You will see that word by word what James is saying in that conference comes from the covenant with Noah. This is why all the other Apostles agree with him. If it had been possible before for a Gentile to be righteous without converting to Judaism, why should we make him convert to Judaism, now that there is the Messiah? So even there it is not the case that Apostles were liberal or fed up with Judaism and therefore decided to be nice and give a discount to the Gentiles, it is because it was something written and accepted in the Jewish law.

So, please read what Paul says in Philippians 3:5 and 6. From what we have just read, without going into the full context here, who is Paul talking to? Is he talking to Jews, or is he talking to Gentiles who converted to Judaism? What do you think? He is talking to Gentiles who converted to Judaism. How do we know that? He says: “I am a Jew circumcised on the eighth day.” Why would he make a statement like this if he is talking to Jews? All Jews are circumcised on the eighth day. There is no point to make, but the argument here is who is more Jewish, and Paul is telling them: “You want to talk to me about Judaism? I am a Jew circumcised on the eighth day, but what about you?” A convert can not be circumcised on the eighth day, and that is why he is making the point: “I am circumcised on the eighth day, but what about you?” So we know he is talking to somebody that is circumcised, but not on the eighth day. And then he says: “According to the tradition of the fathers I am blameless.” According to the tradition of the fathers means keeping the law of Judaism. That is the tradition of the fathers. Now, this is a big statement to make – blameless. He is saying: “I am a perfect Jew.” Do you know what, the Chief Rabbis of Israel today cannot make that statement, but Paul does. And this is the Paul that the Christian world says was against the law of Judaism.

Let’s go to Acts 21:20 now. This is when Paul comes to Jerusalem and the elders of the congregation in Jerusalem meet him. They are telling him: “We have tens of thousands of believers in Yeshua who are devout Jews according to the Torah.” That’s what they are telling him, in Jerusalem at that time there are tens of thousands of Jews who believe in Jesus and keep the Torah. You want to talk about Messianic Judaism?! This is the example, this is Messianic Judaism – a part of Israel, connected to their people, accepted by their people. And when a non-believing Jew walked into one of their meetings he did not feel as if he was in a church, he felt he was at home, because it was a Jewish meeting. They did not just play with Jewish symbols, they did it the way it was supposed to be. If you want to be a Messianic Jew, that is the way. Do not tell me that you are Messianic and act like a Protestant or whatever else. If you want a Messianic movement that should be respected by Israel and by the Jews, then be a full Jew. Do not tell me I am a Jew and then eat like a Gentile. Do not light the Shabbat candles five hours after you were supposed to. You are not supposed to break the law in order to keep it. Do you know why the first church met on the first day of the week? Because they did not want to break the Shabbat. On the Shabbat morning they were in the Temple, in their synagogues, and in the evening they met in the Messiah. It was the Shabbat evening, because in Judaism the day begins with the sunset.

So, tens of thousands of Jews became believers, among them priests who worked in the Temple, and this is what they are telling him – now read verse 21. Listen to this: The bad rumors about Paul make it all the way to Jerusalem. And do you know what? They are absolute lies! Something similar has happened in Israel in the last two years, but I am not going to get into it. That’s why King Solomon said that it is more important to have a good name than good oil, because it is so easy to stain a name. And if somebody stains you like they did Paul it is extremely difficult to change that thinking afterwards. So they tell him: “People here in Jerusalem are hearing that you are persuading Jews against the law of Moses.” From the way they tell him this we learn that the Apostles did not believe this was true. Because if they thought it was true they would have asked him: “Paul, how dare you?!” But they tell him: “We know this is a rumor, and this is what we want you to do to prove it wrong.” Now, if Paul had not agreed with them there would have been no way on Earth he would have gone to the Temple. You see, that was Paul who was not afraid to get on Peter’s case. Do you think he would have been afraid to tell them: “Hey, guys, you don’t know what you are talking about.” So here we see Paul, whose vow has to come to an end, going to the Temple with four more people, and he shaves his head which is the Jewish law for the end of a vow, no matter what your vow was. He does that and he even offers a sacrifice. And then we go: “Ah, how could he! We already have a sacrifice – Jesus is our sacrifice! How could it be that he is offering a sacrifice?!” Is it wrong to offer a sacrifice? No, it is not. Why? Because Jesus is our atonement sacrifice, so we no longer have to offer an atonement sacrifice; we already have it. But of course we are allowed to offer any other sacrifice. And that is why Paul is offering a sacrifice. If tomorrow there will be a Temple all the Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah can offer every sacrifice there except the atonement sacrifice. We learn this from that example, because it was the elders of the church in Jerusalem, the Apostles, who sent him to offer a sacrifice. Then we have another example – the two young men that Paul prepares for ministry: Timothy and Titus. Let’s go to Acts 16:1. Here is Timothy, a young man who wants to go with Paul, and Paul tells him: “If you want to go with me you have to be circumcised. Your grandmother is Jewish, your mother is Jewish, therefore you have to be circumcised”. He insists that Timothy be circumcised. Now, let’s go to Galatians 2:3. We know that Titus wanted to be circumcised, he had approached Paul because this was what he wanted. And Paul says: “No, I’m not going to circumcise a Gentile.” This is what we need to understand about Paul. He was very, very strong about the idea that a Gentile does not have to become a Jew. But the Jew had to continue being a Jew. According to Paul he had no other option.

Now please open your Bible to John 7:1-9. Again we are talking about Succoth (the Feast of Tabernacles). First of all we see something very interesting there. Jesus tells them in verse 8: “You go and celebrate Succoth in Jerusalem, my time has not come yet to celebrate this holiday in Jerusalem.” Therefore He has never openly entered Jerusalem on Succoth yet. But on the third day He is already at the Temple Mount teaching the people. In verse 37 we have Jesus standing there in the middle of the holiday telling the people there: “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink, and there will be rivers of living water.” What makes Jesus talk about water all of a sudden? Do you think He had a dream about being a fish and then He got up in the morning and started talking about water? No, the reason why He is talking about water is because on that day it was the one day of Succoth that they offered a water sacrifice in the Temple – in English they call it the libation offering. So when all of Israel is thinking about the water offering in the Temple, Jesus is telling them: “You think that this is important to me? I am the living water.” It is all in the context of Judaism, because all that is happening is connected to Judaism. The whole idea of the Messiah and of fulfilling everything that the prophets foretold about the Messiah of Israel is within the framework of Judaism.

Now in the evening of that day the High Priest used to go into the Holy of Holies for the first time after the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) to see whether the eternal fire was still on. If the eternal fire was off, God had not accepted the atonement sacrifice for Israel. But if the eternal fire was on, the High Priest came out with a torch that was lit at the eternal fire. Now, here comes something very interesting. On that night the women used to come to the Temple and they all brought unlit torches. They were waiting for the High Priest to light the fire. When he came out, they lighted their torches on his, and the entire Temple Mount was full of light. This is why Jesus is speaking about being light in John 8:12. Isn’t this amazing? Now He is talking about being light. Yesterday morning He spoke about being water, tonight He is talking about being light. When does He say this? After He has saved the woman, saying: “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” Interesting, isn’t it? So you see, Jesus is not doing things because He has a new idea and then does it just because it is new.

Look how much more we get when we look at the New Testament from a Jewish perspective. Look how much we learnt in one hour from a text that you have probably read hundreds of times. So tell me that our faith in Jesus is not rooted in Judaism. Tell me that Christianity is a freestanding religion, and tell me that Jews should just say “I am Messianic” and live like Protestants. It is impossible. And this is why a label cannot take care of an identity crisis. Even you, if you say you are a Christian, you have to live like a Christian. It is not enough just to say “I’m a Christian”; we have to see the fruit. We are going to end with 1 John 2:1-6. Now, here we have a Jewish Apostle. Look how beautifully he says it: “People, I want you to live without sin, and I am writing you this, so you will live without sin. However, should you sin, it’s not the end of the world. That’s why we have a Messiah who paid the price, and not only for us, but for the whole world. And how will we know that we know Him? When we keep His commandments.” Which commandments? Where do they come from? When John is writing this there is no New Testament. The only commandments he can think of is the Torah. And in verse 4 he says: “If anybody says that he knows Him and doesn’t keep his commandments – he is a liar.” Let’s stop being believers and followers of Jesus in theory. Let’s get up and start doing it and practice it. To believe is to do, not to sit. And that’s what I want to encourage all of us: Do, and do according to the commandments, do according to God’s will that is only in the Bible. Do you know what? If we were to lose the Old Testament and only had the New Testament, no one could prove that Jesus is the Messiah based on the New Testament only. That Jesus is the Messiah is proven in the Old Testament. So, let’s get connected and don’t listen to people who do not understand the Scripture. There are a lot of sleek speakers that have studied Theology, and they can teach you all the big words of Theology, but you should learn to read the text. Know the text, and then nobody can fool you. If you want to be a true follower of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and of the Messiah who paid the price for us let’s put our noses back in that Book. Because this Book is where the truth is. It is not in the writings of Calvin, although there is a lot of wisdom there. It is not in the writings of Luther, it is in the writings that God gave to His people. And if you pay attention from Genesis to the Revelation, then all the writers are God’s people. The only Gentile that wrote in this Book is Luke, but he was a medical doctor who converted to Judaism before he believed in Jesus, and as a Jewish convert he found the Messiah. So, according to Jewish law even he passes as a Jew. So, there are actually no Gentiles who wrote in this Book, and how quickly we forget this!
 

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