Why Do We Need the Term Messianic Congregation?

Why Do We Need the Term Messianic Congregation?
by Eli Levi.

The topic that I wanted to start with to set up all of my four lectures here is “Why Do We Need the Term Messianic Congregation?” Why do we need to use the terminology Messianic?

We have to realize that the reason to use this terminology is to avoid saying that we are Christian. About two years ago, I got an e-mail from someone consisting of one little sentence and it said – “What started in Israel as a movement, became a religion in Europe and a business in America.”

We all know what we are talking about, right? We have to realize that faith in the Messiah of Israel – Yeshua was a movement in Israel. We forget as we read the text in the book of Acts that thousands and thousands of Jews believed that Jesus is the Messiah. The text even tells us that there were priests who were working at the temple who believed that Jesus is the Messiah. Judaism had a lot of different groups at the time of Jesus. We had the Pharisees, the Sadducees the Essenes, and within those groups there were even further divisions. For example, the Pharisaic stream was divided in two major camps – Beth Hillel and Beth Shamai. So much so, that the Pharisees had their own inner Pharisaic Sanhedrin, beside the big Sanhedrin that was over all of Israel. None of these groups ever pointed to another and said that they are not Jewish or they are heretics.

So everything was happening inside that framework of Judaism. And within that frame of Judaism there is a lot of freedom for everybody to define himself. Now, the largest group in Judaism was called “Am Haaretz”. The translation of “Am Haaretz” means the ignorant. It means they didn’t know Torah, they didn’t know God, they didn’t know anything. However, when you use terminology like this it's the epitome of self-righteousness. If you point a finger at somebody and say that he is Am Haaretz, then you think that you are better and higher than he and we have no right to be in that place. The truth is, that in every society there is a minority that is very religious or Orthodox and the majority that is kind of in and out. That was the case back then, that’s the case in Israel today and that’s the case in all of Europe. It’s becoming more serious – you remember that I started with this e-mail that the movement has become a religion in Europe, and if you go only 20-25 years back, Europe was a lot more Christian than it is today. I remember years ago in Holland, when you could go to a restaurant and you would see every table praying before they started eating. You could really see it. Now you don’t see it at all. And so Christianity as a religion, in spite of all the Christian speakers who like to come to conferences and say “Oh, there are so many people coming to the Lord and there is openness etc,” is losing altitude - it’s not gaining it. What is the No. 1 growing religion in the world today? Not Christianity, right? The Islam that people are exploding themselves over and which is responsible for most, if not all, terrorism in the world is the religion that is gaining altitude while we are sleeping. So who are we fooling saying that many people are coming to the Lord? If we have the truth of God, we should be the No. 1 growing religion in the world. But do you know what the problem is? Christianity was never intended to be a freestanding religion. And so the early believers in Yeshua did not have to say we are “Messianic” they said “We are Jews” and nobody questioned their Judaism, because they were not a separate part of the society. On the contrary, they were very much part of the daily practical life of Jewish society. They may have had different opinions, but Judaism is used to it. In the Talmud it says there are 70 faces to the Torah. There is no other religion in the world that is that tolerant. Take the Christian world – if you are a Baptist and you are talking to a Lutheran – then for the Baptist the Lutheran is a heretic and for the Lutheran the Baptist is a heretic. Each group thinks that our opinion should be “shtanz” – everybody should think the same - instead of having a plurality of ideas so we can learn from one another. The richness of being students of God and followers of God comes through the difference of opinion. That’s why Proverbs 27:17 tells us that we are like "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." So if we are already sharpened, what are we sharpening, ourselves? Like I said before, Judaism had different groups and different opinions and I mentioned Beth Hillel and Beth Shamai. Beth Hillel said all of Israel are brothers and we should love each other no matter who you are, religious or secular, they are all Israel. Beth Shamai were very strict. There were no discounts to anyone, you had to do everything perfectly – 100 %.

There is a little story about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism and came up to Shamai and told him “Rabbi, what do I need to do to have salvation?” And Shamai looked at him and said “Are you crazy?! I’ve spent all my life in studying to get myself knowledgeable about this question and you want me to give an answer in 5 minutes?! Get out of here! ” And so the guy went to Hillel and asked him the very same question. And Hillel said “Well, first start with being the best that you can, start by loving everyone, and everyday you’ll find a little more about salvation.” That is the difference in the approaches. And, in a way, that’s what Jesus taught us, because he incorporated Hillel and Shamai's teachings. They all probably knew each other. What Jesus is teaching is for you, to require from yourself to be Shamai meaning (strict), but to your fellow friend be Hillel (tolerant). And as always, Jesus takes something that already exists and uses it as a prop for us to understand. Even today Judaism is divided in many different groups. According to statistics the largest group is secular. We have the Habad movement, who think that the rabbi of Lubavitch is the Messiah. By the way, when the rabbi form Lubavitch died Habad published a great book about the Messiah and understanding the Messiah called “Long Live the King Messiah”. When I read that book I understood that I was reading the most Christian document I have ever read in my life, but it was not Christian it was Jewish. And so, once Christianity became a religion, Jews that wanted to believe in Jesus had no choice but to convert into a Christian world, meaning that they experienced pressure on them to stop being Jews.

Christianity actually lost itself in 325 A.D. That is when the Niacin creed was written. In that script it was forbidden to live as a Jew, to conduct your life as a Jew and to have anything to do with the Jewish roots of the Jewish Messiah. Up till then, Christianity was considered a part of Judaism, so everything was within context; there was no identity problem, because it was connected to a culture, to an existing religion. But after the Niacin Creed they took Jesus and put Him in a vacuum. They erased any contact with the roots (Judaism) the deepest understanding of what Jesus was teaching. We all can agree that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' masterpiece of his teaching. If we open to Mathew 5:17we see that when Jesus has just finished His big sermon he laid out His theology and his understanding. In verse 17 at the end of that sermon this is what He tells the multitude there who are predominantly Jews (verses 18 and 19-20). Jesus saw the danger that after that sermon people would take it and say this is what we believe in and nothing else! But, what Jesus is telling there is “I did not come to start a new religion – the religion we have is good! I didn’t come to do away with the Torah or with the prophets.” Which in other words is saying “I came to teach the Torah and the prophets”, right? I came to fulfill those things. And a lot of people read the “I came to fulfill” and they think “O.K. He fulfilled it, it’s done away with.” When He says there "to fulfill" it’s a progressive fulfillment – it’s still being fulfilled. In the Jewish holidays, we celebrate Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur was the day when the high priest went to the temple to sacrifice for the sins of all of Israel. That’s how the nation had its atonement. For 2000 years almost, Yom Kippur is an empty holiday, because there is no atonement. Judaism cannot fulfill Yom Kippur except if you have Jesus as your Messiah. If you have Jesus and His blood as atonement you can celebrate Yom Kippur knowing you have an atonement sacrifice. So I ask you: did He fulfill in the past or is He fulfilling it every day? Because in Matthew 5 verse 18 it says: Amen, I am telling to you, until the skies and Earth pass away I will continue to fulfill. It’s not like I fulfilled and that’s it. So, right there He is telling that the faith in the Jewish Messiah that God sends to Israel first and then to the rest of the world is connected and is part of what God intended for His people. And then in verse 20 He says: If your righteousness will not be higher than the Pharisees’ you will not enter the kingdom. In another place He tells: Listen to what the Pharisees are teaching because they are sitting on Moses’ seat, but don’t take them as an example. When the bible talks about righteousness it’s talking about practical, daily living. In the Christian world we like to say “faith only”, thinking that “faith only” just means say “Hallelujah, amen” and that’s it. And that’s why Christianity looks like it does. We are so busy with the “”Hallelujah, amen” that we already have a direct phone to God and we don’t have to study the scripture any more. And that’s why, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that Christians are talking to one another and saying: God told me that you should do this and God told me that you should do that. This is not the way. God did not give us this book to call us every morning to tell us what to do. So, here is the Messiah telling you “I did not come to start a new religion.” There is no room for a new religion. Not only do we see that He kept the Torah in everything He does, the son of God, the Messiah that God sent to the world, is keeping the Torah now. Let’s read Numbers 4:1-3. What do we learn here? - that a priest could not serve in the Temple till he was how old – did I hear 30? Was Jesus a priest? Yes, He was a high priest according to Melchizedek, right? How old was Jesus when He was baptized? (30) Do you think it was by chance? No, He was fulfilling what was written. And that’s when His ministry starts. He is at 30, because at 30 it’s the Holy Spirit that takes Him to the desert. It’s not Satan. It’s the Holy Spirit that lets Him pass the temptations to make sure that this priest is ready for His mission. And that’s why in all of the New Testament you don’t hear any Pharisee say “What is this youngster coming to teach us!” It is Because He is 30 years old. Not by chance.

And so the Messianic movement or the terminology Messianic... came as a reaction to that new religion called Christianity. Because, for almost 2000 years, a Jewish person who wanted to believe that Jesus is the Messiah found himself or herself having to be converted to a new religion – a freestanding religion. Now imagine that while the Jews were in the exile, if they all would have accepted Jesus in the different churches in Europe where would Israel have been today? Now you understand why God put a veil on their eyes – to protect them. Because most Jews who had converted back then within 2 generations had lost all their Jewish identity. God does not want Israel to lose its Jewish identity. And so a Jew like this that became a part of the church had to sit Sunday after Sunday within the Christian world and see that the people around him would never let him forget that he is Jewish although he converted.

Look what happened in Spain during the Inquisition. Do you know that most of the people who died during the Spanish Inquisition were Jews who converted to Catholicism? Because the Jews who did not convert did not convert, but the Jews who did convert they killed because they said “Oh you are cheating us, you are not real Catholics.” It was also the same in Germany. You know, most of the Jews of Germany were already modern Jews? They identified themselves as German citizens more than as Jews. And some of them were already a few generations in the church, but to the SS it made no difference – to them they were Jews. So all those years that believing Jews were in churches they had to sit there and listen to statements like “Oh, the poor Jews”. “Oh, the poor Jews were under the law of Moses”. Was the law of Moses Moses' law? Who gave that law? God gave the law. Can God give anything that’s less than perfect? We forget it was God. And they were to sit in those churches and hear about the replacement theology – that the Church is the new Israel and God has done away with Israel. There is not one verse that supports that. And so they always felt strangers. And so they began having an identity crisis. And, they started asking themselves – “What are we doing in this place”. As the Jews started studying the scriptures deeper they realized that no matter what will happen they will end up strangers within the Christian world. On the other hand, they would always want to be a part and connected to the Jewish people. And, so they started questioning and searching about what to do with themselves. So, when the first Jews decided to start Jewish congregations who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, congregations that are independent from the churches, the Christian churches looked at them as heretics. The Christian world did not know how to eat that new phenomenon. With the invention of the Messianic movement they were able to partially answer the question of the identity crisis, because they provided a place for the Jew to feel that he is still a Jew in a Messianic Jewish setting. Now, I want to end with the book of Galatians, probably the most misunderstood Epistle in the Christian world. Please read Galatians 3:30 – It says that Jesus has bought us or purchased us from the curse of the Torah, right? So what did the Christian world understand here? That the Torah is a curse! That’s what it’s been told – The Torah is “passé” It’s done away with, it’s cursed. Do you think that God the father chose people in order to curse them? Impossible! Now open your Bibles to Deuteronomy 30:19. Ok, what do we see here? He says – I am proving to you today The Heavens and The Earth, Life and Death, and I gave before you today a blessing and a curse. You have the freedom to choose. So here we see that in the Torah we have a blessing and a curse. By the way, this is not the only place in the Torah where God talks about the blessing and the curse. But the idea here is that in the Torah there is a blessing and there is a curse, right? And in Galatians what does Paul say? He is saying of Jesus – He has purchased you from the curse in the Torah. It’s not that the Torah is a curse, because we saw that there is a curse in the Torah, so if Jesus took the curse that’s in the Torah what is left in the Torah? – The blessing. So what did Jesus do for us – He didn’t do away with the Torah, He did away the part of the curse, so we live only with the blessing that’s in the TORAH, not out in the air!

So, in a way, we had to get out of that institution that’s called a Christian religion a freestanding religion apart from Judaism. All of you here can testify that now, as we come back to the scriptures that were known for 2000 years as Christian, today we see them through Jewish eyes and the New Testament becomes a little spicier, more understandable and more fun because we understand it in it's original setting and not in a vacuum.