It's Alive Part 3
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Ha-foke-Bah Hebrew
Ha-foke-Bah English
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Review where we have been.
This whole series is aimed at unpacking this one question, “Should we really trust the Bible to make sense of our lives?”
Week 1: The Scriptures understand me because even thought it was not to me it was written for me.
Week2: The Scriptures are alive because they present a radically different worldview.
We said that the Gentiles came to this conclusion because they first were attracted to one particular Jew. Once they became enamored with this one particular Jew named Yeshua they became enamored with the back story found in The Law, the Prophets and the Writings.
When the Gentiles started to get interested in the backstory they started to re-create the front-story.
They took the book but not the people, culture or religion.
They started to re-write the front story, started to say that they were now the true guardians of the backstory, the true heir of all its promises. This was a problem very early on. Rabbi Paul addresses the Gentiles in Rome and says
But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Insofar as I am an emissary to the Gentiles, I spotlight my ministry
I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, it is not you who support the root but the root supports you.
Despite Rabbi Paul’s warning the Gentiles took the Jewish Scripture and said they were now Christian Scripture. Jewish Scripture Christian Scripture
For these words have neither been prepared by me, nor embellished by the art of man; but David sung them, Isaiah preached them, Zechariah proclaimed them, and Moses wrote them. Are you acquainted with them, Trypho? They are contained in your Scriptures, or rather not yours, but ours. For we believe them; but you, though you read them, do not catch the spirit that is in them.
The Gentiles interest in the text was two-fold: Christological and Eschatological
The Jews were right but now the Gentile Christians are the most right.
This was not only a direct contradiction to what Rabbi Paul pleaded in Romans 11 it also sent into motion a train of theological thinking that would culminate in what of the greatest genocides known to date: The Holocaust.
How did the Scriptures come alive for the Jewish people?
How did the Scriptures come alive for the Jewish people?
In order to understand the answer to this question, we need to turn to a conversation that Yeshua was having with Israel’s top religious leaders in John 5. This is Yeshua’s second visit to Jerusalem in John’s gospel. Remember, in his first visit he made a whip and drove out the money changers from the Temple and made a prediction about his death and resurrection. He also met with Nicodemus during this time and talked about new birth by the Holy Spirit. He then left and went to a woman in Samaria and after leaving her he healed a nobleman’s son (his second sign John 4:54, first was water to wine) and then it says there
After this there was a Jewish feast, and Yeshua went up to Jerusalem.
We do not know what feast this was, it is reasonable that it is one of the three pilgrimage feasts: Passover, Shavuot or Sukkot. What makes this passage so controversial is that Yeshua heals John 5:5
Now a certain man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.
and it was on the Shabbat. John 5:9-10
Immediately, the man was healed! He took up his mat and started walking around. Now that day was Shabbat, so Judean leaders were saying to the man who was healed, “It’s Shabbat! It’s not permitted for you to carry your mat.”
this led to an official religious persecution of Yeshua
Because Yeshua was doing these things on Shabbat, the Judean leaders started persecuting Him.
To the Jerusalem religious leaders, Yeshua is playing the part of a rebel. And the worst kind of rebel, the kind that breaks the laws of the Shabbat as understood by the religious leaders. It was not that Yeshua was actually breaking any law it was that the way the religious leaders interpreted the Shabbat laws that made Yeshua’s act criminal.
You may be wondering, “How does that work?” Let me give you an example. In the United States of America you are free to kiss the person you are dating given that the person is not under age but at Moody Bible Institute you are not allowed to kiss the person you are dating. Why? Moody Bible Institute interprets the purity laws in the Bible in such a way that they believe “kissing” outside of marriage is a temptation that could lead to other things that could lead to really dangerous moral misconduct. So don’t kiss so you don’t possibly sin. It was the same thing, “don’t heal so you don’t possibly sin in some other area.”
Ultimately, this boiled down to one question. Christian commentators get this wrong all the time. They think the ultimate question that Yeshua is trying to answer is
What is the true content and purpose of the Scriptures?
That is a great question and it is a question that Yeshua and all the emissaries answers at some point. However, the ultimate question here was not content and purpose but:
How do you get the good life the Scriptures promise?
You search the Scriptures because you suppose that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about Me. Yet you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life!
The Jewish nation did not want a repeat of the Babylonian exile.
The Jewish nation did not want a Roman occupying force in its land either.
They were asking the question:
How do you get the good life the Scriptures promise?
The answer they came up with was:
He used to say: More flesh, more worms; more wealth, more worry; more wives, more witchcraft; more maidservants, more lechery; more manservants, more robbery. More Torah, more life; more study, more wisdom; more counsel, more understanding; more charity, more peace. If you gain a good name, you gain for yourself. If you gain knowledge of Torah, you gain for yourself life in the world to come.
Yeshua makes this bold, unheard of, radical statement:
The law was not life-giving in itself but it pointed to One who had life in himself.
“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have put your hope.
What Yeshua does here is next level. He says let play a game of imagine the future when you stand before God. He says, “I know all of you want to believe that when you are called into God’s courtroom that Moses will your advocate. You think that Moses will agree with you that the point of the Law was to the keep the Law. But, Yeshua says, “you are going to be disappointed. Moses will not be your advocate but your accuser.”
This word “accuses” is not like “tattle-tale.” This word is used of someone who brings an official charge to a judge against someone. In this context (cf. especially vv. 39–40), it is clear that Any accusation Moses brings will not be based on failure to obey the Law but on their failure to understand that the Law pointed to Messiah. They take it as an end in itself, the final epitome of right religion, and not, as Yeshua insists it was, as witness to Messiah himself.
If you make the Torah your only hope for salvation and you reject the Messiah to whom the Torah pointed, then the Torah itself, and its human author, Moses, must stand up in outraged accusation.
For if you were believing Moses, you would believe Me—because he wrote about Me. But since you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
The Jewish religion in Jerusalem and of most of the Pharisees pinned their hope on Moses, not in the one whom Moses wrote about. They wanted to know “how to get the good life the Scriptures promised.” But the answer they came up with was, “Study the Scriptures and Obey.” Yeshua said, “No, the answer is let the Torah point you to the one Moses put his hope in.”
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Yeshua is telling the Jewish nation that if you want the Scriptures to bring the good life, the best possible life then you have to
Re:believe
The Gentiles came to believe in the Jewish Scriptures because they were enamored with the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish people were so enamored with the Scriptures they rejected the Jewish Messiah.
This was incredibly difficult. I remember the first time my 8 year old daughter came home with a math worksheet from school. I once knew how to do math but they were teaching my children a whole new way of doing math. It was a whole new way of doing math and I did not get it. Not at all. Initially I just said, “Aw fuuey. This is just strange, I like the way I did math. It worked, why change it?”
That is how most Jewish people felt when Yeshua challenged them to re:believe.
There had been almost 1400 years since Moses wrote the Torah and almost 600 years since Isaiah famously wrote his writings predicting the Messiah and accusing the religious leaders of exchanging the word of God for the doctrines of men. Yet, the prevailing thinking was that the Jewish nation had “covenant obligations” of obedience and that the Scriptures would either bless or condemn based on adherence to them.
Yeshua says its not your adherence or lack there of that will condemn you it is your inability to understand the true goal and purpose of the Scriptures that will either bless or condemn you.
He says you are like spotless virgins. You have kept yourself pure, chaste, and set-apart but you were not prepared to wait a long while for me. Yes I was looking for a virgin but you were not wiling to wait for me. You trusted in your purity, chasteness and moral uprightness and you should have done these things while doing everything you could to wait it out for the long haul until I cam (cf. Matthew 25:1-13).
Then to add sorrow unto sorrow, a narrative arch was created that said, “Because we did not obey the Law, we were exiled and have lost everything so go back to the Law and obeying whatever traditions might keep us from breaking the Law.” Hence, the Mishnah and the Talmud and the Midrashic teachings were added. All in an attempt to create faithful obedience to the Torah but the statement still remains...
But since you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
“how will you believe My words?”
The question did remains, “How will you believe my words, if you will not re:believe his writings.”
Even my step-father told me once, “Michael, we are Jews. We don’t need Jesus we have Abraham and Moses.”
In a moment of honest transparency one of Yeshua’s closest friends said this in regard to this question: John 2:22
So after He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He was talking about this. Then they believed the Scripture and the word that Yeshua had spoken.
it was the eyewitness testimony of his resurrection that helped them to re:believe the scriptures.
Insert Slide with Names
the point is to show the diversity of eyewitnesses and the credibility of what they said.
The Resurrection made it possible to Re:believe the Scriptures.
The Whole of Scriptures pointed to him slide
Explain the Seams Slide
Explains the Songs Slide
Explains the Law Slide
Explain the Prophecy Slide #1
Explain the Prophecy Slide #2
Explain the Prophecy Slide #3
The first century Jews were convinced by the eyewitness to the resurrection of Yeshua and so they re:believed the Scriptures.
Moses got it right.
We got Moses wrong.
Re:believed the Scriptures
Slide that says and they believed the Scriptures were:
Talk about the problem of the Gentiles being accusers instead of witness to the resurrection.
Slide that says Christian Scriptures
Can we get back to