THE LEGACY OF JUDAISM

What have we received from Judaism?

My theme today is: what have we received from Judaism? First of all, I want to define what I mean by Judaism. I don’t mean what we have received from the Jews, either the Jewish people or individual Jews. We need to remember that perhaps the two most influential Jews of modern times, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, spread theories and doctrines which have had a corrupting influence both in the world and in the church. Sin is no longer seen as sin but is diagnosed as an illness or is justified as class war.

Nor do I mean what we have received from modern Judaism. Rather I mean what Christians have received from the Jewish religion and in particular the Judaism of Bible times. In other words, what did Judaism have to offer that the early Christians were able to adopt and make their own? Due to shortage of time I’ll have to simplify some things.

When we think about these issues we need to go back to the roots of our faith, back to God’s Word, the Bible.

Today I shall be using two translations of the Bible - the Complete Jewish Bible and the New King James Version - the former to give a Jewish perspective and the later to give a more Gentile perspective in the use of language.

A. Romans chapter 9:3-5.

"I could wish myself actually under God’s curse and separated from the Messiah, if it would help my brothers, my own flesh and blood, the people of Israel! They were made God’s children, the Sh’khinah has been with them, the covenants are theirs, likewise the giving of the Torah, the Temple service and the promises; the Patriarchs are theirs; and from them, as far as his physical descent is concerned, came the Messiah, who is over all. Praised be ADONAI for ever! Amen.”

The apostle Paul lists eight things that the Jews had received from God. According to the New King James Bible these eight things are: the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, the promises, the fathers and Christ.

I won’t comment on all these eight things in equal depth but I’ll concentrate on a few of them. My aim is to show how these eight things are an integral part of both biblical Judaism and biblical Christianity.

1. The adoption. The Complete Jewish Bible translates: "They were made God’s children.” The translation might lead one to think that Jews were physically made God’s children and that therefore they are by nature somehow different from non-Jews. But this is not a racial theory. The Greek word actually means "taking as a son”, that is adoption. God treats Israel as his son, not all Jews as his sons. Israel is not a natural son but an adopted son. Adoption is based on election - that is, God’s sovereign choice, and is no accident of birth. A natural son is born as a result of a physical act. An adopted son is adopted by choice. Exodus 4:22: "ADONAI says: Isra’el is my firstborn son” and Hosea 11:1 "When Isra’el was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” God has never revoked or cancelled Israel’s status as his son. According to Paul, even in their unbelief Israel has the status and rights of sonship. Paul does not say that this adoption has been transferred from Israel to the church, as many theologians have claimed throughout the history of the church. In other words, replacement theology, which claims that the the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people, has no place in Paul’s teaching. In Romans 8:15 there is the same word 'adoption’: "you received the Spirit, who makes us sons and by whose power we cry out: "Abba! (that is, Dear Father!)”. Or NKJV: "you received the Spirit of adoption...” In the previous verse (v.14) Paul tells us who this applies to: "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” The Holy Spirit leads all those whom God has adopted, just as he led Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness to the Promised Land. The sonship has not been taken away from Israel, but the birthright of Israel has been extended to include all those who believe in the Messiah of Israel. In Ephesians Paul continues this idea: "you (Gentiles) were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12) and (3:6) "that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs... through the gospel”. The same Greek word also appears in Rom. 8:23: "we also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Is this how we feel?
2. The glory. This is God’s shekhinah or presence in the tabernacle and in the temple. Exodus 40:34: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of ADONAI filled the tabernacle. Moshe (Moses) was unable to enter the tent of meeting, because the cloud remained on it, and the glory of ADONAI filled the tabernacle.” 1 Kings 8:10-11: "When the priests came out of the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple, so that the priest could not stand up to perform their service, for the glory of ADONAI filled the temple of ADONAI.” Christians too have from time to time experienced the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit and the manifestation of God’s glory. This is the privilege of Israel, but in the Messiah non-Jews have by God’s grace been granted the possibility to experience his presence. Where has God’s glory disappeared from our churches and our meetings?
3. The covenants. In the Old Testament there are several covenants. God made covenants or agreements with Abraham, with Israel during the time of Moses and later with King David. In particular we can think of the new covenant mentioned in Jeremiah 31:31-33. "The days are coming, says ADONAI,when I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra’el and with the house of Judah ... I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Notice that the new covenant applies to the house of Israel, and the tribe of Judah, that is, the Jews, not to Gentiles or the church. We need to bear in mind that the Bible does not speak of the old and new covenants but of the "first covenant" and the "new covenant". All these covenants have their fulfilment in Jesus the Messiah. In no way can the new covenant be taken away from Israel and the Jews and transferred to the church. Jews have often accused the church and Christians of stealing Israel’s covenants and blessings and leaving them with the curses. For too long the church’s missionary strategy has been: ”Leave Judaism and join us Christians - leave the synagogue and join the church.” But if we accept what Paul teaches, the Jews have a right to dispute this - they might say, "All the covenants belong to us Jews, including the new covenant. In our Messiah you can join us Jews.” This does not mean that Christians should join the Jewish community ro become members of a synagogue, but we should recognize that we have entered into the blessings of God’s new covenant with Israel by God’s grace through the Messiah. As a result Christians should seek fellowship with Jews who believe in Jesus as their Messiah.
4. The giving of the law. This is a reference to the law of Moses or Torah. We should remember that really it’s not the law of Moses but the law of God which God gave to Israel through Moses. And I don’t have to remind you that Torah means teaching or instruction rather than law, although God’s instruction does include law.
5. The service. This is the service of God in the Temple with the sacrifical system. When Paul wrote Romans around the year 57 the temple was still standing and the sacrifices continued another thirteen years until the temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Paul does not say that the temple rituals were now a waste of time, but the Letter to the Hebrews, which is not by Paul, deals with the problem: what is the point of temple sacrifices now that the Messiah has come? Jesus is both the sacrifice and the high priest who performs the sacrifice. But this sacrifice was not performed in the temple and not even inside the walls of Jerusalem. Jesus’ sacrificial death took place physically at Golgotha (or Calvary in its Latinized form), but it also had a spiritual effect in heaven. Hebrews 13:12: "So too Yeshua suffered death outside, in order to make the people holy through his own blood.” According to Hebrews the Jerusalem temple was only a "copy and shadow” of the heavenly temple (Heb. 8:5). Jesus fulfilled his ministry as high priest when "with his own blood he entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9: 12).
6. The promises. The Old Testament contains many promises given to individual people, such as Abraham and David, but some promises were given to the whole people of Israel, and one of these is the promise of the coming Messiah. The promises to Abraham and David were also given to their descendants. So all these promises belong to Israel. God is obliged to keep his promises because he is a faithful God. He cannot refuse to keep his promises to Israel. But by the terms of the covenant he has no obligation to extend the promises to Israel to apply to the whole world. If a non-Jew receives the blessings of God’s promises to Israel, it is by grace alone and only in the Messiah. If we deny these promises to the Jews, we also deny them to ourselves. We cut off the branch on which we stand.
7. The fathers. That is, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus’ God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
8. The Messiah. Yeshua or Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, the Anointed One of Israel. What was he anointed for? In the Old Testament both kings and priests were anointed with oil. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, the Ruach ha-kodesh, as the King of Israel, the Son of David, and the High Priest in the heavenly Temple, although during his earthly ministry he was neither king nor priest.

All this is a brief overview of what the apostle Paul and the Letter to the Hebrews teach us about what the Jews have received from God.

This is why Paul proclaimed that the gospel was first of all for the Jews. Rom. 1:16: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek (that is, the Gentile).”

B. The post-70 situation

After the temple was destroyed in the year 70 the Jews needed to consider what was the future of Judaism without a temple and the sacrifices. Without sacrifices there was no forgiveness of sins. In New Testament times there were several parties within Judaism. The most influential of these were the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees was a priestly party. Without a temple they were unemployed, and so their party split up and disappeared. The Pharisees, however, were based on the synagogue and not the temple. According to a legend there were 394 synagogues in Jerusalem in the year 70. Jesus and his disciples were active in both the temple and the synagogue. They were opposed by the Sadducees in the temple and by the Pharisees in the synagogues. After the destruction of the temple in 70 and the later Jewish revolt in the second century only two of the parties within Judaism survived - the Pharisees and the Nazarenes or Jewish Christians. Gradually Pharisaism developed into Rabbinic Judaism, and Jewish traditions were written down in the Mishnah and Talmud. Jewish Christians had the New Testament. So both groups interpreted the same Scriptures, our Old Testament, but from different viewpoints. The rabbis tried to create a new Judaism without the temple. Christians interpreted everything in a christocentric way, that is, centred on the Messiah, who had done away with the need for an earthly temple. The message about Jesus was so powerful that it appealed to Gentiles too. By the second century the Gentiles formed the majority in the church. After the fourth century Jewish Christians gradually disappeared from history.

It seems to me that in a sense there were two trees that grew alongside each other in the same ground. They were both grounded in Old Testament Judaism, but they grew apart so that they became further and further away from each other and a great gulf emerged between them. Judaism and Christianity - the synagogue and the church. Are they so far away from each other that it is impossible to build a bridge between them?

Over the past centuries and in particular over the past 30 years a growing number of Jews have found Jesus as their Messiah. These Jewish Christians or Messianic Jews have begun to ask awkward questions, questions that Christians and the church need to think about and study. For instance, how important is it that Jesus is a Jew, does it matter that he is Jewish and not, say, Chinese or Finnish? What is the attitude of the Jewish believer in Jesus to Israel, the church and the synagogue? What is the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the Messianic community? What is the right attitude to both Jewish traditions and Christian traditions? Can we give up some of our unbiblical traditions, so that we can find fellowship between Jew and non-Jew in the Jewish Messiah and in the Holy Spirit?