The One New Man Study - The Theology Of Jew And Gentile - One In Messiah
Entire Study Recently Updated January 2006
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The One New Man Study - The Theology Of Jew And Gentile - One In Messiah Entire Study Recently Updated January 2006
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Lesson ELEVEN: The Biblical Meaning Of Israel, The Jews, and The Hebrews
According to Jewish Rabbis, the Torah is the pivot of all Judaism. Even in Messianic Judaism, the movement of Jewish believers in Jesus, the Torah holds great importance in the lives of those who call themselves the children of Abraham. For the Christian, the Torah, or the first five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), also holds foundational meanings for everything in the Word of God. It is the Torah that records the Creation, the Flood, the call of Abraham, the lives of the Patriarchs, the sojourn in Egypt, the rescue from Egyptian bondage and the revelation of the priestly sacrificial system which foreshadow the work of Messiah Himself. Any Messianic Jewish perspective, therefore, must be clear in its understanding of Torah and the early covenants God made with Israel. And any CHRISTIAN perspective must begin with the same understanding in many ways for we are connected to the Torah through the Jewish Patriarchs.
Jewish history begins with Abraham. The whole story of Abraham and the eventual birth of Isaac is miraculous and points to the Messiah Yeshuah. Isaac, like Yeshua, is the only son of his father, miraculously conceived, and offered up as a sacrifice to God for the sake of obedience to His Father and for the benefit of others. Sarah was supernaturally enabled to bear this child just a MIRIAM (Mary) supernaturally conceived by God's Holy Spirit. From Isaac sprang JACOB who became ISRAEL.
Although the term "JEW" is derived later from the tribe of Judah, it is safe this writer feels to refer to ALL Israelites as those of the descendants of Jacob - or Israel - Abraham's grandson. God's covenant with Israel begins with Abraham, so we might say Abraham, in this sense, was the first Jew. The word "Hebrew" was first used to identify Abram's family (Gen. 14:13).
Genesis 14:13
It was Abraham's grandson, Jacob, who was first called "Israel" after he wrestled with God (Gen. 32:28). Later, the nation of Israel was divided into two sections, the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the ten northern tribes. A "Jew" is literally a physical descendant from the ten northern tribes. However, God calls both Judah and Ephraim, "Israel" in Ezekiel 37:16. Today the term "Jew" is used to identify all the physical seed of Abraham through his son, Isaac. Paul, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, called himself a Jew, an Israelite and a Hebrew (Phil 3:5, Acts 21:39, and Romans 11:1), proving all three terms are used interchangeably.
Ezekiel 37:16
The reason this is so important is that, in relation to the end time harvest, Jews need Gentile believers and Gentile believers need Jewish believers. Gentiles sit in a unique role as being grafted into the Jewish vine. Because of unbelief Israel was cast aside for a season so the Lord turned to the Gentiles to offer salvation as to provoke the Jewish race back to Him through jealousy having seen their covenant with God given to another. We as Gentiles are the tools of the trade you may say for God to show mercy and salvation to the Jewish race once again. Our closeness with the Jewish race goes beyond secular friendships, which we have many. This is a SPIRITUAL friendship where we as Gentiles are so on fire for Jesus, have such a burning heart to see God move in a supernatural way that we literally make the Jewish race mad or "jealous" if you will, to the point of wanting what we have - THEIR SALVATION through Christ.
Romans 11:3-22
Paul speaks in this same passage of Romans 11 of a remnant of believers even among Jewish people that works "according to grace." The Gospel message is not cut off from ANY person - no matter their culture or national origin. A Jew can get saved just like a Gentile can today. In the scope of God's prophetic calendar though, we are living in the Times of The Gentiles, thus most of the emphasis has been on the "GENTILE" branches instead of the Jewish "ROOT." As a whole though, and I'm speaking more "nationally" than individually, God has "given THEM (NATIONAL ISRAEL) a spirit of slumber, "eyes that they should not see," yet an election of grace continues to be reached today by the power of the Holy Spirit. The church is comprised of both Jewish and non-Jewish believers (GENTILES). So when we say the Gentiles need to embrace Jews, we're actually talking in terms of both evangelizing those who are lost and don't know God and fellowship with those IN THE SAME FAITH as the Gentiles. This "FAITH" actually started with the Jewish roots of the Church!
If Ruth the Gentile had not attached herself to Naomi the Jew, she would have never met Boaz. The fruit of this marriage produced Obed, the grandfather of King David. Yeshuah was descended from King David. If Esther, the Jew, did not marry King Ahasuerus, the Gentile, the Jewish people would have perished. When the Jews were spared, it spared a revival among the Gentiles. The book of Esther says many became Jews:
Esther 8:17 - And in every province, and in
every city, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews
had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land
became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.
The theology of the One New Man is a coming together of both Jew and Gentile UNTO CHRIST, which will cause a dead religious church to explode with the glory of God! The blindness on the eyes of most of the Gentile Church, which incidentally is comprised of a majority of AMERICAN and Canadian believers, is as supernatural as the blindness on the eyes of the Jewish people. The jealousy God seeks is a spiritual craving to rise in their hearts to want the same Savior we as Gentiles embrace! For them to embrace the CHRIST in us, we must allow HIS LOVE to flow through us to His kindred after the flesh. This is a SPIRITUAL ISSUE! Israel's blindness, while allowed by God, is demonic because it keeps the nation from recognizing her true source of Salvation - Jesus Christ. Believe me, the blindness on their hearts is not spiritual. Israel's deliverance however, will be spiritual, as the anointing of Jesus breaks the nation free from this millennia old blindness one day when He reveals Himself to her just as Joseph revealed himself to his older brothers. Another story in the Bible relating to brothers illustrates this truth. Sid Roth, of Messianic Vision, gives an excellent application of this parable:
"The younger son is a type of the Jewish people. The older son is a type of the Gentile church. When the younger son returned home, the father (a type of Father God) held a great celebration with food, music, and dancing. The older brother was jealous. Luke 15:28 says that he was "angry (with deep-seated wrath) and resolved not to go in" (Amp.). He didn't understand the One New Man. He didn't realize that the Jew must be grafted into the Body of Messiah in order to have the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (the heavenly feast enjoyed by the Messiah and His Bride, the church). The older brother couldn't comprehend the truth expressed by Yeshuah that He would not return until the Jewish people were restored by the Father (Matthew 23:39). He couldn't see that by being in the seed of Abraham, everything the father was HIS (Luke 15:31)."
When the Jew
comes back to the Father, God will bring a new spirit of freedom to the church! Religious Gentiles, who are stuck in their traditions, will be angry
over much of this new spiritual environment because it will bring change. Many
will refuse to participate. After 2,000 years
of living with the pigs (the younger brother ended up feeding the pegs),
many
Jewish believers have a lot of rough edges. Gentile Christians (older brothers)
have a sweetness because of generations of knowing the Messiah. The Jewish
believers so desperately need to be embraced by their older brothers (THE
GENTILE CHURCH). Yet despite there being two parts, there is only one Body. The Body of Messiah is not
just Messianic Jewish
and/or Gentile Christian. Unity is not achieved by having "joint" meetings
between the two. Unity comes when both come together, respecting each other's
identity and worship MESSIAH as ONE! In Christ Jesus, there is NO WALL OF
SEPARATION! His blood has torn the wall of "enmity" down! When God sees the Body, He doesn't see Jew
or Gentile but He sees
His SON YESHUAH. He is the ONE NEW MAN, the King of the Jews! And in HIS BODY -
both Jews and Gentiles can be saved, set free, delivered, made whole, sealed and
bonded with the POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST through the blood of Christ. Praise God.
Out of all the Gentiles, God set one man apart for Himself. From this man He made a new people, physically and covenantally distinguished from all the others. That man was Abram, soon to be called Abraham.
Genesis 12:1-3
We know little of Abraham's early life. He came from Ur of the Chaldeans with his father, Terah; he settled in Haran, whence he was later called forth. Some scholars believe Abrams' family was completely pagan while others feel there were some in Abram's home who recognize the one true God. Either way the nature of God's call to Abraham was unique. The new people created from Abram were to be different and set apart from the Gentiles:
Numbers 23:9 - For from the top of the rocks I
see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and
shall not be reckoned among the nations.
Genesis 17:10-11 - This is my covenant, which
ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among
you shall be circumcised. [11] And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your
foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
Genesis 12:4-7 - So Abram departed, as the
Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five
years old when he departed out of Haran. [5] And Abram took Sarai his wife, and
Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the
souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of
Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. [6] And Abram passed
through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the
Canaanite was then in the land. [7] And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said,
Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the
Lord, who appeared unto him.
Genesis 13:14-15 - And the Lord said unto
Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look
from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and
westward: [15] For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it,
and to thy seed for ever.
The covenant is passed down through Abraham's son, Isaac, and then to Jacob - whose name was changed to ISRAEL - and to his twelve sons. God's covenant is offered by His grace, not as a response to works. God required faith, issuing in obedience. Abraham "believed the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness." (Gen. 15:6).
Genesis 15:6
The Bible tells us that Abraham took Sarah as his wife who could not conceive a child. Since she could not conceive, Abraham prayed that his son Ishmael (born of Sarah's handmaiden Hagar) would be his heir. Ishmael was physically circumcised and the son of Abraham, but God told Abraham that his descendants would not be named, and his inheritance from God would not go, through Ishmael. His name and his inheritance would to go Isaac, his child who would be born of Sarah (Gen. 21:12)
Genesis 21:12
Ishmael was Abraham's descendant, literally his "seed," but in the sight of God, he was not truly Abraham's SON. For when Isaac was finally born and God called Abraham to offer him up, He said, "Take Isaac,....your son, your ONLY SON, whom you love, ...and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you." (Gen. 22:2)
Genesis 22:2
From God's perspective, the only TRUE SON of Abraham was Isaac. He was physically descended from Abraham and had Abraham's FAITH. The physical descent was not sufficient. Ishmael was also circumcised. That also was not sufficient. Though he was physically descended from Abraham and had been physically circumcised according to the covenant that God made with Abraham, he still was not considered a true son. After Abraham's death, the faithfulness and promise of God continued to and through Isaac. God continued to select out a particular lineage for His plan of redemption. He continued to call Himself by the name of his people. He now became the "God of Isaac."
Isaac married Rebecca who gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was the first born. They had the same mother and same father, but they were to be two peoples and not one:
Genesis 25:23 - And the Lord said unto her,
Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from
thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the
elder shall serve the younger.
Genesis 35:11-12 - And God said unto him, I am
God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall
be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
[12] And the land which I gave Abraham
and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the
land. Jacob, whom God named "Israel," had 12 sons, who gave their names to the 12 tribes of Israel. His fourth son, JUDAH (Yehudah) from the root word that means "PRAISE." The name "Jews" <Yehudim> is also derived from this root. Jews were created to be a PRAISE to God. The word "Jew" in its different forms, appears about 200 times throughout the Bible. The terms "Jew," "Hebrew," and "Israelite" are all terms used to designate the same thing:
"Hebrew" is the oldest term. It is derived from the name of 'Eber', the great, great, great-grandfather of Abraham. The word is first applied in the Bible to Abraham in Gen. 14:13 and to Joseph in Genesis 39:17 who is called a "Hebrew" slave. Later, the children of Israel became slaves in Egypt. God would chose Moses to redeem His people out of Egypt. He appeared to Moses in a burning bush and told him:
Genesis 14:13
Exod 10:3
Jonah 1:9
Some have tried to teach that Abraham was not Jewish because the term "JEW" does not appear until later in history, referring to the descendants of Judah. They then make a theological separation between the "Jews" and their fathers. But by that reasoning, neither Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, Aaron, Gideon, Samuel, Jonah, Paul, etc...- would be Jewish either. Nor would any of the descendants of Judah who lived more than 20 years before the exile of the northern kingdom. That is not the way the term in used in the Bible. The word is used in the New Covenant to designate those who lived in Judea (John 11:54), the religious leaders (7:13), the children of Israel in the land as opposed to those from the Diaspora (Acts 10:39), and the children of Israel as opposed to the Gentiles (Acts 14:5). Paul, was from the tribe of Benjamin and called himself a Jew (Acts 21;39) as well as an Israelite (2 Cor. 11:22) and a Hebrew (Phil. 3:5). The New Covenant uses the word "Greek" to describe Hellenistic Jews, the Gentile inhabitants of the territory once encompassed by Alexander's empire (Romans 1:14) and all Gentiles (Romans 2:9,10) both saved and unsaved. The term "goyim" actually refers to those outside the commonwealth of Israel's covenant with Messiah and vice versa.
John 11:54
The term JEW has been given to all those who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Bible it is also used synonymously with the term "Israel." By the time of Jesus the term "Jew" had become a designation of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no matter where their particular tribe or place of residence - be it Israel or the world. This has all been documented to say this: A Jew is a Hebrew is an Israelite. That is the Biblical meaning of Israel. Israel is NOT the church. The CHURCH is not Israel. Gentiles are not spiritual Jews. As Gentiles we make up the group the gospel was sent to after the rejection of Christ by Israel at the crucifixion.
One can argue this point both culturally AND spiritually in one sense. In a spiritual sense however, we are ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS! This controversy over the identity of Jew and Gentile is what like to have split the Galatia church!
Galatians 2:1-21
Some of the Jewish Christians were still trying to hold to the Law of Moses, which means they had accepted Christ as their Messiah, but gave no credence to what Christ actually did at the Cross whatsoever. Peter and others in the Jewish part of the church were compelling Gentiles to "live as Jews." As we near the end, the problem is reversed in many ways as we Gentiles seek to compel Jews to "live as Gentiles (Greeks)." I believe we can worship Christ and embrace His salvation, grace and love and yet still maintain our respective identities! This does not have to complicated. Religion, however, ALWAYS complicates matters. Wars are fought over religious arguments and men die needlessly for such arguments. This is not an argument. This is to define what and who we are referring to when we say the "Jewish" people. The Jewish people are Jews. We are "Greeks," according to terminology in Scripture, the Jews are Hebrews. Luke, the writer of Acts, speaks of meetings between Jews and Greeks often. Paul went further in his revelation in 1 Cor. 10:32-33 basically listing the three main groups of people on earth:
If one does not have an understanding of this one will not understand the Jewish roots of Christianity and thus, one will have a difficult time understanding the scriptures as it concerns Salvation. Most false doctrine today concerning end time events come from this fundamental issue of failing to rightly divide the Word as it pertains to Israel and the Church. If one tries to "fit" a doctrine or theology that pertains to Israel and seeks to make it mean something for the church, friend, you're headed down a slippery slope.
Your salvation experience was cut out of a Jewish olive tree from which sprang a Jewish covenant and Jewish promises. It was paid for by a Jewish redeemer and Messiah. By faith we as Gentiles are grafted into this vine. It's a great salvation for both JEW and Gentile.
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