Messianic Church for Christians Yay or Nay

 

It is vital you look up and read all the bible references

Introduction

More and more Christians are joining the “Jews for Jesus” also known as the Messianic Jew movement and moving away from the teachings of grace, unconditional forgiveness and being born again. 

This begs for research because we are now under grace and not under the Law – what is pulling Christians back to Judaism and why is this not in line with what Christ wanted to establish when He birthed His church in Acts.

Messianic Judaism Beliefs

So what is the theology of Messianic Judaism. They believe in

• ü  Trinity – 3 in 1
• ü  Jesus is the Son of God
• ü  Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin
• ü  Holy Spirit fills the hearts of Believers

Main Stream Judaism

Main stream Judaism – Judaism under the Law as found in the Old Testament, on the other hand deigns all of these.

Judaism is not primary concerned with salvation from sin but with living according to the will of God as expressed in the written Thorah – first five books of the bible [Instructions/Teachings/Law].

Why is this important?

When one looks at Messianic Judaism where they still practice some of the celebrations, laws e.g. avoidance of pork etc and holy days found in main stream Judaism, you have to nit-pick their beliefs to see if they are tainted by the Judaism as found in the Old Testament and not following the new pure way of life Christ prescribes in the New Testament.

It has been said, by placing yourself under the Law once again, you nullify the Scriptures in the New Testament.

New Testament Christianity

So the questions we have to ask ourselves are – did the first Christian church follow the Law word for word and expect its gentile converts and Jewish converts to do the same?  Read: Acts 15:1-21 

Truth: The Laws of Kashrut were overturned in Acts 15 by the first Church Council. Kashrut was and important part of Traditional Jewish religious observations based on the Torah – yet Christian scriptures in the NT explicitly reject this Jewish practice. This is extremely important when we look at the role the OT  Law plays in the lives of Gentile converts and Messianic Jews.

We will find that throughout the NT the Jewish Law is rejected.

Jesus and the Law  : Mathew 5: 17-18

Question: According to Acts the Law did not continue in the Christian church yet in Mathew 5 Jesus categorically states the Law does not disappear but remains until the end of time as noted in Revelation. The passage in Matthew seems like an Oxymoron when compared to Acts – what is your take on this?

The Truth - If I get married to Mr Law – I am obligated as his wife to be in submission to him while he lives. But if I die the marriage is null and void and either of the parties left behind may marry again without breaking the Law.

Our spirits are dead and according to the Jewish belief we must live according to the Torah – the Law to appease God and maybe be given eternal life. But if we die spiritually to our old self and are reborn spiritually by the Holy Spirit we then become the Bride of Christ. It does not mean the Law is abolished – it stands as is, but we are no longer subject to it.

READ: Ephesians 2: 1-9

The main verses are 8+9. ‘For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works so no one can boast’.

READ:  Math 22: 35-40, Galatians 2:20-21  ^]

Jesus Take - People who join the Messianic church have a great respect for the Jewish nation and their beliefs. Let’s have a look at scriptures in the NT and discuss what they say to us  - how we now live and what we are supposed to do

READ: John 8: 42-45 ; Mark 7:5-7; Mark 8-9, 14-2; Matthew 15: 10-11; Matthew 15: 14;  Galatians 3: 26-29; Galatians 3:23-26; Galatians 6: 15; 1 Timothy 4: 3-4; Mark 7: 14-15; Hebrews 8: 6-13   

Romans 7: 6  ⁶ But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Galatians 2: 20-21  ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”^[e]

Summary

1.    Circumcised means nothing what counts is being born as a new creation

2.    By dying we have been released from the Law and serve by way of the Spirit – that does not give us freedom to sin but it does give us freedom to live under grace

3.    Everything God created is good, nothing is to be rejected

4.    Nothing outside can defile a person by going in – its what comes out of the heart [mind] through the mouth that defiles us

5.    The New Covenant makes the first one obsolete and outdated

6.    If righteousness could be gained through the law – Christ died for nothing

Closing: There is one verse that people who join the Messianic church misinterpret and that is found in the New Testament and it says

Romans 11: 17-24 – We are grafted into the Olive Tree – the Jewish people, so now we receive the blessing God promised Abraham.

Truth: One has to look at these verses in context because they are not saying as the Christians who join the Messianic church believe – that we must now go back to obeying the Law, stop eating pork, wash our hands, celebrate Jewish holidays etc. because if we don't we commit sin, because if you read it in context and in other chapters in the bible we find-

1.   ' 20 Yes, but remember—those branches were broken off because they didn’t believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe'. - It’s pretty clear that we are joined/grafted not under the Law but under Christ.

2.     Ephesians 3:6 ' And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus'.

Final thought: Inheritance comes for both Jew and gentile when they belong to Jesus Christ not because they are jointed under the Law. 

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Social Networking at 68 and other night terrors

I know how to edit photos. Me at 68 yeah right!

I love this quote, "one day you are cock-of-the-walk, the next you are a feather duster"

So,after the initial shock of going onto pension and being delegated by the same people who awarded you with certificates for being the best and most creative worker, to "pensioner" and as my husband said, "past my shelf life" - Really!! I decided to reach out into the Social Networking arena. 

Someone should have warned me about the vultures out there. Honestly I did not even know the word catfishing was part of the English language.

So, after stumbling across Instagram, Hangouts, WhatsApp and Facebook to name a few - my education into social networking began. So for other geriatrics out there here is a good definition from Google.

"A catfish is someone who creates a false online identity. Catfishing is common on social networking and online dating sites. Sometimes a catfish's sole purpose is to engage in a fantasy. Sometimes, however, the catfish's intent is to defraud a victim, seek revenge or commit identity theft".

I happily hopped, skipped and jumped onto these sites oblivious to the dangers lurking in the shadows. Put up my profile as Married, 68 years old and a little bit of my interests. Posted some family photos, hobby photos and a few photos of me. I had learned how to use photo editing software - so maybe I lied - and looked more like 40 than "past my shelf life".

Bad move. Within three weeks I had over 230 young and old males asking to connect to me. Even if I deleted them, more would take their place. Plus some women jumping on the band wagon to offer their wares to unsuspected customers. I was continually deleting people off the list.

Some men really seemed genuine, showing the same interests as me - but believe me, I found out to my horror, this is not the case. Men on these social networking sites either need a mother, a psychologist or a "lady of the night" to put it bluntly. If you have never tried phone-sex this is about as close to it as you can get if you are willing, but beware there is underling motives for this and believe me its not sexual gratification. Lets face it ladies, if this hunk of a man with come-to-bed blue eyes wanted sex, he would not ask a 70 year old generic for it. Get real!!

So, here goes this geriatric skipping into the lives of several men who said I was beautiful, sexy and a few other things I cannot post on this Blog. Some said they fantasized about having sex with me, [so much for "I am past my shelf life]", one wanted to know if I liked coffee or tea and a few more personal things - while I unsuspected, chatted away while these vultures built up a profile of me.

It can be flattering to have a 32 year old ask you if you mind telling them about what it was like being 68 years old and still "active" - OMG. Ok I will answer 5 questions - which I did as honestly as I could - but never again.

I was a Training Librarian, taught on critical thinking skills slowly I noticed the cracks in their stories, some things did not match. I analysed the photos they sent and using background information like the name of a ship on a flag, and I was able to track some of them down. Most of them had stolen identities from other people online.

I then started doing research. If he looks like a male model - he's probably is not. If he says his wife died and he is raising his daughter alone - believe me this is a common denominator here among a lot of the men I made friends with. The really dangerous ones will try to draw you away from Instagram to dodgy places like Hangouts where you have to offer your email details giving them future access to your life.

These people will chat away for, in my case, over six weeks and slowly gain your trust, they will talk about their home town, their interests, their joys and sadness, your country and your politics, but in the end they are going to either ask for money, sexual chatting or use what you said to blackmail you.

So fellow geriatrics, from someone who is staring 70 years in the eyes, stay away from open social networking. Limit who may see your details and contact you, even if he says he also likes cats. Take it from me, a seasoned veteran of social networks - you may feel good about yourself again, but if its "Too good to be true", it probably is!

Life Past 65

 Me at 69

So did you also hear life slows down when you go on pension. Well not to burst your bubble but they lied - yip.

While you may have more time because you are away from the work rat race in Gauteng, believe me there are all sorts of things waiting to grab your time and drag you screaming into volunteer work and ministries. If you do not know how to say "No" or at the very least, "Let me pray about it" - you may find yourself driven to an early grave though pure burn-out.

Sure the bible says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me", but that does not mean you are the only person God can use on this planet. We all have our callings and our ministries - immaterial if we are "saved" or not. And yes, we have reached that stage in our geriatric lives where we have multiple skill sets and years of experience that could help us do most things with ease. However - something you may have realised is, as you get older [every five years or so], your mind may retain all these things [well except where you put the keys and why on earth you opened the fridge] but your body definitely cannot keep up even if you think it can.

So is this the end?  Not at all. Its time to prioritise what you can do and do well while still enjoying life after 65. Its learning to take cat-naps if you need one, and loving being able to wake up at 3am to jump onto your computer without worrying about "work" in a few hours.
It's time to not try to do everything but to step back and mentor the young adults with your years of wisdom and skills so they can take over and run the race.

And in the end - you can, just like myself - sit back and reflect on a life lived to the full. Not much I did not try on both sides of the fence but except for a few regrets - most things just added colour to my life line. Its a time when you can watch the younger generation taking the foundation you set and building on it to the benefit of all those they come into contact with. Then you see your purpose played out in front of your eyes.

What about death, am I worried about it. Good grief - no of course not. Get real man, we all die, and for me that means life after life and the one that is waiting is far better than the one I have now.
You are welcome to your opinion but you always need to ask yourself, "what if D is right and I am wrong"?  Better hope you live longer, much longer than me.  Gwanny D'

Sacrifice or Self Glorification

Today we survived the site-inspection - run by a panel of experts from quality, industry, other universities and one dear man who called himself a teacher [not a lecturer] and who absentmindedly had arrived at the Library yesterday instead of today.

It was like facing the gestapo interrogation team.

In true baby boomer fashion the panel addressed the library members consisting of one decaying baby boomer [myself], one millennial [x-generation] and one y-generation.  Armed with a set of questions neatly typed out and created to draw out the inner truth of what you were not saying, or what you were hinting at -  they tried to fit everything my left brained colleagues and myself being right brained with an interfering left brain said, into their neat and tidy box.

They got so frustrated - we had them running in circles. I could see them try to analyise what we said and how we reacted, trying to read between the lines - pens whirring taking down snappy notes for later discussion and we happily led them in a merry goose chase to the truth. I mean, lets face it, why lie. We are not trying to speak in the tongues of angels - we are just telling it like it is. We work as a team, we laugh together, we cry together, no one ever says, 'that's not in my job description'. We train each other, we support each other, we fight and we forgive, we all do the work we do with passion - is that so hard to believe Panel Member number 2? Stop trying to fit us into your box - which quadrant do you think I would land in. I have been tested at 90% left [not mathematical] and 100% right. Impossible? - yeah that's what the psychologist said, and fascinated wanted to make me a case study. !

Eventually we won them over - when someone is passionate and speaks the language they want to hear - like success rates, information training, adaptability of courses to meet the learning preferences of each group, interventions, identifying gaps in skills and knowledge - re-training. Man one is just speaking the language of the gods and they eat it all up like those hard sugar cookies my Hottentot nanny used to make for me as a child.

Sad really because when you have a passion for something you don't have to analise what to do, it just comes naturally. Later you read in a book how it should be done and then a light dawns - 'man that is what I have been doing all along - so I must be on the right path'.

Objectives are not things set down on paper with sweat and blood like panel member 3 thinks they should be - they are birthed in the minds of people who can see the needs of others, who can have empathy with those left behind when technology overtook the world like a high tide wave foaming and frothing, who desire nothing more that to open windows to new ideas, new skills and new knowledge in such a way that everyone they touch has revelation of what is being taught and can understand it and apply this new found knowledge or skills to their lives.

Chairperson panel member number 1 now caught up in the passion of the moment says, "you should be presenting papers at conferences nationally" - shall I tell her I tried and wanted to run a million miles before I did that again - naw might as well let her enjoy her fantasy. 

This reminds me of just a week before that an organization had begged me to take over the leadership - I would be its national president. They felt I was the only person on this planet they trusted to do it with passion combined with dedication, vision and managerial skills.

I just began to enjoy the sunshine and the feeling of being wanted because of what you are capable of,  when suddenly I saw Satan clear as daylight laughing in the eyes of Panel member number five. A little voice said to me, "you have to choose. This light you are using is my light, this gift to teach and reach are my gifts, you can use them to bring glory to yourself like a file saved in the temp folder, or you can take up your cross and follow me. The Son of man has no where to lay his head - this glory you want to claim belongs to the Father and is given to you on loan to be able to draw others to His love and His salvation".

The choice self glorification or the cross - this is not as easy as it seems, God help me to choose the cross.  I love life, I enjoy every minute, I give myself in free abandonment to nature, to reading to creating curriculum, to training people to use puppets, to be a volunteer where I can, to reach out to a dark and lonely world, to share where I can, to listen to those people do not want to listen to - but I realise it is only when your focus is on Gods purpose for your life and you join Him in what He is doing, that everything lights up and gets meaning for the greater good.  It's not like you stop enjoying life, you enhance it.

So 'no thank you national president status', 'no thank you great and wonderful conferences and key note speaker'. While I play at self-glorification a whole generation is heading for the end of their lives without that inner peace that I have, without the knowledge of how God loves them  and with no hope for eternal joy with God the Father.  Let me turn the focus off myself and like John the Baptist say, "prepare a way for the Lord, I must become nothing while He becomes great".

Thinking 'out of the box' for churches

http://www.rethingkproject.com/

"Theran’s ministry calling is to communicate the reality of God’s Kingdom using creative forms of media. His desire is to stand in the gap between the church and the world - the creative and the boxed - the academic and the popular."

So are we boxed and academic - or are we a church that will open new doors to 'the world' using creative forms - so that the unsaved can be drawn in and be introduced to the full love of the Father?

I believe our calling is to train up our congregation into discipleship, spiritual growth and to having the mind of Christ in spiritual maturity. But we also have a calling to reach 'the world' and that may mean re-engineering /recreating how we do things in 2010 compared to how we did outreach in let's say 1980.

I know the traditionalists will shout - 'compromise'. But if our church is filled with Christians and
not unbelievers I think there is a gap in our thinking. We can pay the missionaries to go into Africa - or we can take being mission minded as reaching out to the community of lost around our churches and how we are going to do that in new and refreshing ways.

Any ideas?

Food for thought for our evening services.

Homework Centre and Library

We are trying to open a HomeWork Centre and Library for the children in Pretoria West. To achieve this we are appealing for school text books, study aids, reading books, encyclopaedia - printed and digital. Plus we need a computer with DVD drive, a scanner printer and if anyone has a small - photocopy machine it will go along way to assisting the children.

Moving venues takes Faith

Faith is such a strange idea - it literally means believing in something you can't always see but you know in the supernatural, spiritual world - it exists. It cannot be worked out with mathematical calculations but for those who discover it's power, it is a portal to a new experience, and once you have tasted its fruit - nothing else will satisfy.

We have started to move our church to a new venue as the old one has been taken back by the Department of Education.

We began with zero finance to do this, a deposit to cover the new venue and our retiring pastors accounts to furnish for one more month. The new venue costs R6000 compared to the old one of R1100 per month and I just trusted God. "Father if this is your open door - give us wisdom".



Teens, young adults and adults all gave up hours and hours of free time to clean up what used to be a very dirty and badly kept factory on the first floor of an old building - our new venue.







God honoured our faith and some of the finances suddenly started to come in from donors - as we need close to R20 000 just to make the vision we have for people in Pretoria West a reality every little bit helps.
Maybe one day someone will say -'I have money to spare, here is an extra R10 000 monthly' ($1000) - then we will realise our soup kitchen, Adult education reading and writing centre for the illiterate and homework centre with a library for those kids and teens who are less fortunate who come to our church. There is a public library but it will take them about 1 hour to walk there and most cannot afford public transport, plus its not safe for smaller kids as there are unscrupulous people out there who abduct small children to kill for muti. (suppose to be magical medicine to cure impotency, AIDs, wife problems, unemployment etc - here in Africa people believe and trust in any demonic source of power except the one God who loves them and is the answer to all their needs).


You may ask what has literacy training and feeding people got to do with religion. Well nothing but when it comes to Christianity that is a different matter all together. You can't tell someone Jesus loves them and then not help them with their basic needs they need to survive physically and grow spiritually.

So now I just trust the spirit of the Lord to work in the hearts of people to release the fiances or physical goods like chairs, taps, water pipes etc we need - and that is called faith. Its not just sitting around hoping - its asking, looking for the best, cheapest suppliers with Gods guidance and its trusting His children to respond as well.
As our Teddy Bear class sings, 'Faith is just believing what God says He will do, He will never fail us, His promises are true.' PTL