Where Do We Begin?

What is Our Model?

Some of you are new to KMC and some have been with us for years, but in either case, it is important to ensure we all understand what we are working toward here and upon what framework we have decided to live out the life of faith we have been called to. This is what I want to touch on today.

So, ‘who are we’? Or, ‘what is our identity’? To answer this question, it will help to look at the two elephants we find ourselves sandwiched between - Historic Christianity on the side and Historic Rabbinic Judaism on the other. Let’s start by looking at Historic Christianity.

Historic Christianity

Most of us have come from a background in the Christian church. There are many denominations and differences between them but for now let’s simply refer to the origins of this background as Historic Christianity.

There we would have come to appreciate the God of Israel (though we might not have fully appreciated that description), we would have come to appreciate the Scriptures as God’s word, and we would have accepted Yeshua as our Lord and Saviour. But if we are to categorise ourselves and want to be accurate, we aren’t exactly under the banner of Historic Christianity. We are seeking a life interwoven with the fullness of the Torah and we embrace a Jewish understanding of our halachah (our pattern of living). Historic Christianity distanced itself from its Judaic roots and therefore distanced itself from where we stand.

Historic Christianity often holds a platonic worldview. If you were to ask many Christians today about heaven, they would speak of it as an otherworldly, ideal, non tangible place where we will one day go after leaving this hopeless earth so that we can float around with our cuddly friend Jesus without the need to ever again be held back by these awful bodies. I’m sure this general thinking sounds familiar. What you might not realise is that this is Platonic thinking, from the ancient Greek Philosopher Plato (427BC) who said that the things we can see and touch in this world are not real, but are mere reflections of the ideal immaterial concepts.

Plato believed that man is primarily made up of soul, and that man’s soul is trapped in a body, much like being trapped in a prison. To Plato, salvation occurs when the soul is set free from this prison-body.

But the Bible doesn’t teach that ‘this material world is bad and that the immaterial world is good’, and that we need to escape it, rather it teaches that God is sovereign over all material in earth and heaven, and is working to repair the corruption of this world so that He might dwell in our midst.

The early church fathers were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Some actually believed that God had given Greek philosophy to the Gentile world to prepare it for the coming Messiah in the same way that God used Moses to prepare the Jewish people. For example:

Clement of Alexandria (150 AD) wrote:

…before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith… philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring “the Hellenic mind,” as the law, the Hebrews, “to Christ.” Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.

The famous theologian Augustine (354 AD) was very heavily influenced by Plato. Augustine “was attracted to the spiritual interpretation of the kingdom.” For Augustine, “the kingdom of God consists in eternal life with God in heaven and it was Augustine’s spiritual view of the kingdom that also contributed to his belief that the church is the fulfillment of the thousands year reign of Christ. It was then his spiritualized view which became the accepted Roman Catholic view and the rest is history as they say.

Effect of Platonism

You might think this platonic thought doesn’t affect you but I can assure you it does. 1 Cor 10.31. You probably assume that ‘spiritual’ means non physical. It doesn’t. It means provided by the Spirit. When Paul says ‘spiritual food’ it doesn’t mean immaterial food, it means actual food (Manna, quail, etc) that was provisioned for the people through the work of the Spirit. It was actual food ‘from Heaven’ and it was actual water ‘from the rock’ - the source of the provision was a spiritual source but it was nonetheless a physical provision. In other words Israel were provided with all sorts of spiritual gifts (food and drink) but it didn’t save them because ‘they sat down to eat, and to drink, but then rose up to play (ie: idolatry).

1 Cor 15.44 will make this clearer. We know the resurrected body is physical, but it is a Spiritually regenerated body, not an immaterial body.

Our goal is not to escape this world, but to be transformed and to live in a transformed world. Historic Christianity implies just the opposite: the purpose of redemption is that man should leave this world, that the soul should take flight to heavenly realms. Consider the product of Historic Christianity in the cathedrals of the medieval Church. The worship service was an attempt to replicate the imagined heavenly scene, with “other-world” architecture, “other-world” music, and “other-world” services. Christianity came to the masses as a means of escape from the sorrow and woes of their fallen world. Even in services now many churches seek to provide an experience not discipleship.

Faith in Yeshua as our Savior and Messiah sets us on the path of sanctifying this world for His dwelling, not offering us an escape from this world. We find our mission therefore to be that of sanctifying our marriages, families, community, and world. Our eyes are not cast upon the possibility of escaping this world, but on our God-given calling to sanctify it for Him. Granted, the hope of His return “purifies” us (sanctifies us) all the more, but not because we will escape this world, but because we are preparing our world for His dwelling.

This incarnational perspective (God dwelling with us) as over against the escapism of Historic Christianity thus gives a proper perspective on every aspect of our lives. Our work, occupation, recreation, relationships, community, and all that we do takes on a sacred dimension for us. For us there is no such thing as the “sacred” and “secular,” only “sacred” and “profane.” In other words everything is contained within the religious realm as God’s creation and it is either holy or unholy. This will make a huge difference in our perspective on work, on recreation, on relationships, and how we use our time. In short, it will urge us toward a biblical perspective on every aspect of life.

Historic Christianity views life as mundane and hopes to be elevated by the miraculous; Scripture teaches us to live life as sacred and expects the presence of God's miraculous hand because He dwells with us. Indeed, the call of faith upon God's children is that they should live with the expectation that Yeshua will return and judge each according to their deeds and that God will bless them as He has promised He would.

Like the other sects of Judaism in the 1st Century, we hold a unified worldview, not a dualistic one. This meant that both material and non-material were good and could be sanctified as holy; that life in this fallen world and life in the world-to come were not essentially different, but were distinct only in terms of the impact that corruption had in one vs. the other. The difference between this life and the next is not that this is physical and the next is non physical - both are physical - the difference is that the future life will be repaired, whereas this one is in a state of disrepair.

Rabbinic Judaism

On the other side, one or two have come from a Jewish background and we can refer to this identity as Rabbinic Judaism. We can call it this because the Judaism we have today is largely based upon the Rabbis after the destruction of the temple. This is a significant source of misconception for many messianics today. Many people assume the Judaism we have today is what existed during the time of Yeshua, but this is not the case.

Since the Temple was the defining focal point for the primary sects of the 1st Century Judaisms, the Jewish community that remained after the Destruction sought new ways to maintain her identity without the Temple and priesthood. During the time of Yeshua there were Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essences, Samaritans, Scribes, Sicarii and of course as Ben reminded us, the plain every day Jews that simply lived their lives according to their understanding and communal tradition. And let’s not forget diaspora Jews that had a mix of hellenistic philosophy and Jewish belief (Philo is an example of that). This is why in the academy it is referred to as Judaism(s) of the 1st century. There was no monolithic Judaism during the time of the Apostolic Scriptures. Judaism was sectarian in the first century.

But after the Temple was destroyed in 70AD by the Romans, the Jewish landscape underwent a significant change from Second Temple Judaism(s) to Rabbinic Judaism. One popular theory is that this occurred over time starting at rabbinic council meetings that occurred in a town in Israel called Yavneh. Yavneh was a town in Israel and according to rabbinic sources, when Titus destroyed the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, Johanan ben Zakkai (a leading Pharisaic proto-rabbinic leader who opposed the Saddusaic leadership) established a center of learning in Yavneh. This attracted early rabbinic scholars to the area, and Yavneh gradually became a new spiritual center in Israel. Israel’s legislative body (the Great Beit Din, later referred to as the Sanhedrin) relocated to Yavneh (b. Rosh Hashanah 31a).

The Rabbis at Yavneh solidified their approach in the Mishnah, expanded, defined, and redefined in the later Talmuds. Here is a quote from Jacob Nusner an ordained conservative rabbi (the NYT referred to him as the most published person in human history):

From the time of the Mishnah onward, however, most of these kinds [of Judaisms] have referred not only to scripture but also to the Mishnah and its companions, the two Talmuds and cognate writings. So these diverse kinds [of Judaisms] have formed exemplifications of a single, fundamental kind of Judaism. If, therefore, we wish to make sense of nearly all religious expressions of “being Jewish” and nearly all types of Judaism from the second century to the twentieth, we must begin with the Mishnah.

In other words Nuesner is saying the diverse kinds of Judaism we have today are fundamentally derived from the rabbinic literature being the Mishnah and later Talmuds, whereas before the diverse Judaisms were fundamentally derived from the Scriptures. Even today, if you suggested you wanted to study Torah to a religious Jewish person, they would likely think you meant study the Talmud.

We heard about the Oral Torah a few weeks back. The belief is that Moses wrote down some of the Torah but was also given oral instruction from God as to how to carry out the commandments that were not written down. According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, the Oral Torah was passed down orally in an unbroken chain from generation to generation until its contents were finally committed to writing following the destruction of the second temple.

We should all agree that the Oral Torah is not the standard by which we are to measure ourselves - it does not have authority over Yeshua’s community. In fact, ironically, this concept of Oral Torah is anti Torah! If we are going to call out the sins of the Christian church, should we not also call out the sins of the Jewish community? The concept of oral Torah is anti Torah because it goes directly against the Torah itself. People may be offended at this statement, and that is fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that the concept that the Oral Torah is equally authoritative over the lives of God’s people is anti Torah. The Torah says Dt 28.58-59.

One thing also needs to be made clear. Does anyone have a Bible? Hold it up. Section out the Apostolic Scriptures. The writing you are holding there is older than any rabbinic writing. We have no rabbis writing before that document. So when you hear about Hillel and Shammai, they lived before the time of Yeshua, but we have no writing from them. We only know about them from the later rabbinic writing, and relatively little material is ascribed to anyone living before 70AD.

There is more we can speak about to explain that what we have today is not necessarily what existed during the time of Yeshua. The place of gentiles in the Judaisms of the first century, and particularly gentiles in the Apostolic Scriptures, is a significant difference. Even the concept of synagogue is not the same, but we would need to save all of this for a different time.

It is at this point that I want to step back from both these elephants in the room and make an important caveat. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. There are valuable traditions in both Historic Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Judaism has far more of these traditions and so we are often referring to rabbinic traditions. Traditions in and of themselves are not bad. Not all the traditions in the Oral Torah (Mishnah, Talmuds) are bad. Many of them are helpful in uplifting God as a community. My and my family have personally appreciated and benefitted from many popular Jewish traditions and we as a community practice many of them together today. We cannot and should not discard traditions simply because they are found in the Mishnah or Talmud. Having said that, we need to be sober. We are a group trying to discover, or better yet, recover where we fit between two elephants and the temptation is to adopt practices without properly assessing their value or alignment with the Scriptures. So this is the point - our posture toward tradition needs to be one of caution, not uncritical and open embrace. Not that we should be afraid of tradition, but we should understand who we are and be able to articulate for ourselves how an outside tradition fits within our self definition. We also dare not look down on the Jewish people just because we have a better understanding of what God wants. We pray for them and we do not boast.

Apostolic Judaism

So, back to the main question - who are we?!

If you notice there was one very important Jewish group that I didn’t mention, anyone know which? Acts 24.5. I want you to notice carefully how important it is to have a right view of self. Others will try to define us - here Paul is being accused of belonging to a Jewish sect (with negative connotation of insurrection), but Paul’s answer demonstrate that we ultimately need to understand who we are for ourselves. Look at how Sha’ul responds to his accusers Acts 24.14. He is saying that he legitimately worships the God of his ancestors according to The Way. Paul is turning their accusations of political identity into a right understanding of a religious identity. Where the accusers want to define Paul according to their terms, Paul defends himself by defining himself according to his terms.

Many messianic believers today make the mistake of discarding or downplaying the Apostolic Scriptures as ‘less than’ the rest of Scripture. But this is unacceptable for us as disciples of Yeshua. This is living by a definition that is placed on us from a rabbinic line of thinking. This line of thinking is often built on the incorrect assumption that today’s Judaism is the right model - we have been duped into thinking that - today’s Judaism is a divergence from the Judaism of the first century. Hook, line and sinker we believe things like ‘oh Jews would never believe that God could take on a human body’.

Early followers of the Yeshua movement are also described as “the disciples” (οἱ μαθηταί, hoi mathētai; e.g., Acts 11:26), “the assembly” (ἡ ἐκκλησία, hē ekklēsia; e.g., Gal 1:13; 1 Cor 1:2), and “Christians” (Χριστιανός, Christianos; e.g., Acts 11:26; 26:28; compare 1 Pet 4:16). The earliest followers of Yeshua are fully within the boundaries of a first century Jewish sect and followed their teacher Yeshua as handed down by Yeshua’s sent ones, also known as Apostles.

So how should we define ourselves? Here is one suggestion - we might refer to this as Apostolic Judaism because we belong to a Jewish sect that has been handed down from the apostles of Yeshua. This small Jewish sect of the first century has survived by God’s miraculous hand and has ballooned into a multi million person remnant.

This, I believe, is why we continue to have identity issues in the messianic movement today. We have not fully appreciated the fact that we have our own identity distinction from Rabbinic Judaism and distinct from Historic Chrisitanity. And here is the thing - we are not new. There were three groups that emerged from after the destruction of the temple - Rabbinic Judaism, Historic Christianity, and this pesky sect in between that didn’t fit exactly into either of them.

On the one hand we have Historic Christianity, on the other we have Rabbinic Judaism, and in between we have Apostolic Judaism which shares some things in common with both, and yet has its own distinct identity.

Rabbinic Judaism: the theology and halachah which based itself on the teaching of the Rabbis in the Mishnah and Talmuds

Apostolic Judaism: the theology and halachah of Yeshua and His Apostles (i.e., the Torah as interpreted and applied by Yeshua and His Apostles)

Historic Christianity: the theology and halachah of the Greek and Latin Church fathers (i.e., the Bible as interpreted and applied by the Church Fathers).

Insert comments from early church fathers having to denounce jewish practices.

You would have noted that I used the term Messianic movement, or we might want to say ‘messianic Judaism’. I think the term is largely helpful today. It explains that we see ourselves as a form of Judaism and yet with a specific focus on the messiah. And taken together, these words are understood by others to generally mean Jews that have put their faith in Yeshua as messiah. I think that is very helpful. But I do not think it is the fullness of our identity and we on the inside need to be able to decipher the subtle distinctions that will come up underneath the banner of ‘messianic Judaism’. As Ben showed - one stream has a burning desire to find its identity within the wider Judaisms today and another stream has a burning desire to live out the Torah as it discards the glasses it received from Historic Christianity. There is of course overlap between these two streams, nevertheless we can at least start here as a basic trajectory.

So, as a self identification, in my opinion, it seems best to see ourselves as Apostolic Judaism. Apostolic Judaism is not rabbinic Judaism with Yeshua sprinkled in. And Apostolic Judiams is also not Christianity with a Tallit. Apostolic Judaism is an intentional desire to hold Yeshua and the teaching of his apostles as supreme above all other models.

What is Our Foundation?

So as an Apostolic Judaism - what is our Foundation?

When building a house it is important to have the right foundation. If the foundation is not set in the right conditions the building will sag overtime and collapse. If the foundation is not level, the walls and structure will be crooked and nothing will align and this will lead to issues over time. You will try to install the window and it won’t fit because the manufacturer sent you a squared window and your window frame is crooked. So we know that the foundation is important to have a building that lasts over time.

Yeshua has a parable about this when he says: Mat 7:24 whoever hears his words and does them will be like a person who builds on solid rock as opposed to sand.

You see, Yeshua is referring to the day of judgement and he is saying one person is going to stand in the day of judgement - the person who builds on my word, the solid rock - and another person is not going to stand, the person who doesn’t build on my word, the sand. The rain and the winds and floods represent the day of the Lord.

Is 28.16-17

So we know that the foundation upon which we will stand in the day of judgement is Yeshua. 1 Pet 2: 5-6 wants to make this point and to do so quotes our holy prophet Isaiah 28.16

This is what Yeshua is saying - the hail and flood of the day of judgement cannot move the person who decides to stand upon the stone laid in Zion by God himself - Yeshua our messiah. He is our foundation.

This concept - the Day of Messiah - is extremely important to understanding our Apostolic faith tradition and is a significant distinction from Rabbinic Judaism. I challenge you to find one page of the Apostolic Scriptures where the concept of the coming salvation brought by the coming judgement is not permeating the thought. This by the way is not a unique thought pattern of the Apostolic Scriptures but was a dominant thought during the first century Jewish sects. Because it’s so important I’ll speak more fully on this in a future message.

That parable finishes with the line in vs 28-29: the crowds…authority

This is the crux of where we should begin. The authority of Yeshua. As you would have read prior to this parable, Yeshua is the one to either let you into the kingdom on that day or reject you. The authority lies with Yeshua and the Jewish people of the first century sensed this.

Foundational Scripture (Torah) vs. Foundational Salvation (Yeshua)

The truth is we have two foundations depending on the perspective. The Torah is the scriptural document upon which the prophetic and apostolic writings are built. And Yeshua is the salvific foundation upon which a person stands in the Day of Judgement and upon which Yeshua’s ekklesia is built.

Despite my generally negative comments toward historic christianity, we need to understand that this distinction in foundation - scriptural vs. salvific - is why we rightly understand many Christian groups to be inside family even though they have de-emphasized and over spiritualized parts of the Torah and also haven’t dealt with their lingering antisemitism. We must understand that Apostolic Judaism is a tradition that looks and focusses toward a point in history - the Day of Judgment - and there is only one way to stand in the Day of Judgement and that is full allegiance with God’s son Yeshua HaMashiach. Many Christins, as we know, fully agree with this even though they misinterpret the Bible and haven’t fully rectified that.

So, Yeshua is our foundation for Salvation. The Torah is our foundation for Scripture. As an Apostolic Judaism we have come to appreciate these truths.

But, as an Apostolic Judaism, we also know that one cannot sit and stare at the foundation without recognizing the purpose for a foundation. One doesn’t build a foundation to simply put a chair on it and sit in the rain! One builds a foundation to start something in the right way. The goal is not the foundation, the goal is to have a foundation that will properly hold up an entire structure. The goal is to add to the strong foundation using strong materials to create a lasting structure. And the purpose of the structure is to be glorious and useful for the one who occupies it!

Eph 2.20-22

1 Cor 3.10-17

Conclusion

There is more that be said, especially for us about what we should look like more practically as a community that uses the Apostlic model, but that will have to be a future teaching as well. The “messianic movement” in our modern times has suffered from an inability to find the group's self-definition. We have tried to show our commonalities with Historic Christianity on the one hand, and with the traditional Synagogue on the other. We've attempted to convince both of these groups that in some measure we fit with each. We have not wanted our Christian brothers and sisters to reject us as heretical, nor have we wanted the Synagogue to reject us as idolators—as those who have forsaken the Torah. Yet we must face this reality: both the traditional Synagogue as well as Historic Christianity have moved away from the position of Yeshua and His Apostles, and have defined themselves in some terms that are clearly unacceptable to us. It is time for those of us who have accepted the Torah as normative, yet who have also confessed Yeshua to be the Son of God and His Messiah, to recognize that we will not find our definition in either Rabbinic Judaism or Historic Christianity. While we surely have affinities to both, and in some areas of theology and halachah greater affinity to one or the other, we have come to believe that the Judaism of Yeshua and His Apostles is also distinct from both. We are attempting to live out the life of “The Way"—we're trying to recover Apostolic Judaism. As such, we must set ourselves to rediscover and put into practice the worldview of our Master, and the life of faithful obedience to which He calls us.