Shabbat shalom and may the grace of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) be with you all. I want to welcome you back to a new series of sermons following a month's absence from the MLT pulpit. Aside from being on a 'Korean errand', the principal objective of my being away has been to spend time with Yahweh in ways that a busy ministry doesn't normally permit as well as to restructure my priorities owing to the severe limitations currently imposed by some major health issues.

I have also been able to make a start at doing something I have wanted to do for a number of years, and that has been to devote the time needed to approach the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) using new sets of 'spiritual lenses'. That's not an easy thing to do when you have become accustomed to looking at them (or anything else, for that matter) with a particular mindset based on historico-cultural expectations. It's a bit like having walked on a well-worn trail in the mountains all your life wilth familiar scenes only to find there are other paths affording new vistas along the way leading to the same summit. So principally I have been heavily immersed in the books of Acts, Romans, Hebrews and my old, familiar hunting grounds, the Johannine Epistles (1-3 John) - and particularly Romans which I consider one of the most complex and therefore hardest books of the Bible to understand. What I have wanted to do has been to transfer my gaze away from the details and to understand the broader setting and overall spiritual movement in the writers - the 'bigger picture', if you like, based on the considerable knowledge we now have on first century AD Judaism. I hope to be able to share some of this material over the months ahead, Yah willing.

This has meant exchanging the Bible versions I normally use for a season for an altogether new set so I am endebted to the excellent work of N.T.Wright, J.B.Philips and William Barclay, all brilliant scholars in their time. Phillips and Barclay did their work in the 1960's using a style I grew up with but N.T.Wright is from the 1990's to the present. Wright's in particular fresh and vigorous translation has lit a renewed fire in me and communicates concepts in a new and exciting way. My 'reference' or 'guiderail' has been the 1940's to 1950's scholars' version, which I taught from in the 1980's, namely the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which remains an excellent literal version.

It's amazing how blindspots can appear when you mistakenly come to view 'translations' as the original Davar (Word). Afterall, is it not true that many people's understanding of Christianity is actually a misunderstanding? And I don't just refer to unbelievers. There are a lot of believers who haven't 'got it' yet, for whom the vital connections haven't yet been made, because ours is a living religion, whose original ideas and concepts can only be fully appreciated by having an accurate understanding of the historical and linguistic backdrop of the revelation given to the original authors by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit).

Thus so much of the original sense of the New Testament remains hidden without a proper understanding of what 'Israel' is and it has nothing to do with any political entity that has arisen in modern (20th century) times. Reading Romans through this lens has been a bit like being exchanging an earthbound and very weak refracting telescope for an orbiting Hubble telescope many hundreds of times more powerful and seeing stars and galaxies previously unseen because they were unviewable through the distorting haze of earth's atmosphere.

It's been an interesting four weeks, to say the least, both in this exercise and in seeking the face of Elohim (God) and becoming 'reacquainted', as it were, on a more intimate basis. Yes, I know, we are supposed to do this during the season of Teshuvah immediately before Yom haKippurim but even that can become a ritual devoid of real life and meaning if you're not very careful. Of course, when you seek divine intimacy, you get a very bright light indeed shone on your soul which is rarely flattering, as you start seeing cracks, and blemishes, and sometimes downright ugly warts and malformations, so I have had to take a few rebukes. If we are forced by the government to get an annual MOT check-up on our car, is it not reasonable to suppose that Yahweh wants us to do the same with ourselves? As Socrates once said, the unexamined life isn't worth living. And I don't want to have to face the Creator, especially with life-threatening illness haunting me, without having done all I could to get right before I die.

So what are we doing, and why? Have we gone down any cul-de-sac's or dead-ends that require a retracing of our steps? Have we exchanged streams that once contained living waters for dried out rivers that seemed more promising simply because of their greater size? There are many spiritual dead-ends, the bequests of well-intended but mistaken theologians who made a number of false assumptions along the way.

As messianics we have all trodden the Torah path that evangelicals by and large fear, or have been reluctant, to tread but there are many dead-ends on that road too, not to mention a few potholes, chasms and other dangers. I have known many messianics shipwreck their faith, lured away from the Divine Messiah by the pied-pipers of Judaism. Messianism is riddled with heresy.

And as evangelicals, have we not sometimes been waylaid by the deceptions of our hearts and emotions, thinking they were the Ruach (Spirit) when they were our own flesh? It is normal for young believers to make mistakes on that terrain. Here older and wiser believers, preferably from different ages in addition to our own and from different denominations, who have consciously forsaken the flesh and sought the face of Elohim (God), can be very helpful indeed in our spiritual development. I could name many like Thomas à Kempis could be mentioned.

For I am fully convinced that there is a spiritual 'atmospheric level', if you will, that leaves denominational Christianity and Messianism behind, transcending all the petty squabbles and ignorance of man-made institutions and doctrines, where there is a clarity of mind and heart that comes about through face-to-face communion with the Most High. It is in this rarified atmosphere that the true sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father have to meet and find unity.

One interesting consequence of my 'time alone' with Yahweh that I might mention is that when I went back online and started posting materials of the kind I had posted before, having pretty much shut the door on social media for a month, avoiding all the restless noise of the world with its bad news, rumours and general doings, the Ruach (Spirit) instructed me to take 90 per cent of them down immediately, such was the new sensitivity I was enjoying, as I became accutely aware of what pleased Yahweh and what did not. The internet is full of fantastic resources but it is also saturated with lies and foul spirits, and can have a spiritually numbing effect through sensory overload. So I was quite surprised by my own new-found awareness. So much of what I had thought nothing of before now felt crude and base - it was insensitive, cynical and sarcastic, those coarse vibrations of the mind and heart that are nowhere to be found in the image of Messiah, the image we are supposed to have exchanged our fleshy nature for.

How quickly we are willing to sell-out our spiritual heritage for Esau's 'mess of pottage' or a bowl of the world's "bread and lentils" (Gen.25:34, KJV). It's so easy to follow the crowd in that respect, because the crowd follows the stream of least resistance which messianic discipleship must disdain and actively resist. True emunah (faith) is not passive, it requires some effort from us. Knowing Elohim (God) can be lonely at times for the few men and women willing to tread that path. Do you want to eat at the table of the blind masses, sharing in their carelessness and coarseness? Or do you want the heavenly venison, the refined meat of those who have rejected the flesh, pursuing a better, heaven-bound path? It's a free choice. We are none of us compelled to do these things. And it doesn't just happen automatically because of a one-off profession of faith.

So it is all the more astonishing to me as I once again reflect on the incredible yet misguided Calvinist belief that we have no free will, that agency is only apparent and illusiory, rather like the evolutionist's claim that design in nature is only apparent. If evil is not the consequence of autonomous human freedom, then we are faced with a dilemma: for if Elohim (God) did not purpose to create autonomous creatures, as the Calvinists insist, then either:

• 1. Elohim (God) Himself purposed (willed) evil (Yah forbid!); or
• 2. Evil is purposeless.

• 1. The false idea that Elohim (God) actively purposes evil; and
• 2. His actively using evil for His good purposes.

So you will have noticed some online changes, particularly in social media which I was seriously considering departing from permanently. I have reorganised a few Groups so as to hopefully maintain the right focus. Spiritual food must be available on the periphery for those on the periphery as well as in the Kingdom's centre for the actively seeking.

Speaking of which, this is something else I have been carefully examining this last month, namely, accurately identifying 'Kingdom of Elohim (God)' or 'Kingdom of Heaven' spoken of in the Gospels, for the word 'Kingdom' means something quite different to different groups of believers. The 'Kingdom' was practically all Yah'shua (Jesus) taught about, this other-worldly domain that Pilate wondered at when he said:

"My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Judeans. But now My kingdom is from another place" (John 18:36, NIV).

What does it even mean for the Elohim (God) of Israel to become 'King'? How did Yah'shua (Jesus) become the 'King of Israel' when by His own definition to the Roman Procurator His Kingdom was other-worldly? What, then, is 'Israel', at least for now? Well, it certainly cannot be a political entity or a state given this restricted meaning, which means all those groups claiming to be 'Israel' in the physical, political sense are cults.

We will never know what the Saviour meant without going back into the first century world that was Roman-occupied Judæa because that was the cultural and theological framework that both Messiah and the apostles worked in, just as today we have to deal with Catholics, Protestants, Messianics and others in a secular thought matrix. Are you willing to come with me into that world and to leave the 21st century behind for a moment while we grapple with the two central ideas of the Besorah (Gospel)?

Today, at any rate, I am simply going to sketch out some headers which we will need to fill in in detail another time. First of all, Yah'shua (Jesus) made it very clear that the Creator of the Universe had purposed from the very beginning to address and deal with the problems within His creation arising from angelic rebellion and human sin through Israel. That's very clear as you study what the four evangelists recorded. And He didn't merely intend for Israel to be an 'example' to the world, a model of a nation under the divine rule of a Theocracy. He intended far, far more. It is clear - and this is an enormously important point - that 'Israel' was, and is, and will continue to be, to be the means through which the world would be saved. That has not changed, even in the New Covenant.

Second, Yah'shua (Jesus) clearly believed, as many though not all of His contemporaries believed, that this heavenly goal would be accomplished through a climactic moment in Israel's history, in which the nation of Israel would be saved from her enemies and through which the Creator-Elohim (God), the covenant Elohim (God), would at last, finally, bring His ahavah (love) and justice, his chesed (mercy) and emet (truth), to bear upon the whole planet, bringing renewal and healing to the whole Cosmos. The two technical words that theologians use to describe these things, which remember are corporate concepts involving lots of individuals as a whole unit, are known as election and eschatology.

This is what you've got to 'get' - before you go down the Protestant avenue of 'personal salvation' and conclude that that'sd 'all there is', what evangelicals call the 'Romans Road to Salvation' (Rom.3:23; 3:10-18; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9; 10:13; 5:1; 8:1; 8:38-39), important as that is - and it consists of two things:

• 1. Yahweh's choice of Israel in saving the world; and
• 2. Yahweh's bringing of Israel's history to its moment of climax, through which justice and mercy would embrace not only Israel but the whole world

Yet even in Yah'shua's (Jesus') day, 12-tribed Israel had not existed as a nation, or even half a nation (or less) since the Babylonian exile of Judæa of 597 BC! The century-long independent Maccabean or Hasmonean state (140-37 BC) was not Israel. When Yah'shua (Jesus) came, Judæa was but a weak and insignificant province of a pagan Empire (Rome) and ruled by very worldly Idumæan puppets not at all unlike our élitist political class today. There were zealot political groups who wanted to change all of that by revolution but Yah'shua (Jesus) disowned them most emphatically.

Some Israelites from the Houses of Judah and Benjamin had returned from geographical exile but by-and-large they were still in spiritual and theological exile. And they weren't even to remain in the geographical territory of the Promised Land for very long. Indeed, the only reason they were there at all was not because they were righteous or in right relationship with Yahweh but solely so that messianic prophecy could be fulfilled! Yet Yah'shua (Jesus), knowing that another (and final) exile and disapora were imminent, continued to preach the message of salvation within the context of Israel both for then and for the future. So what was going on, and why? What was He trying to tell future generations of believers after the Roman scattering of the last Israelites from the Holy land?

Another important thing you need to understand is that none of Yah'shua's (Jesus') talmidim (disciples) were at all thinking about how their relationship with Yah'shua (Jesus) would secure themselves a place 'in heaven', where disembodied souls go after death, the way modern evangelicals speak of such things - you would have heard none of that sort of talk either amongst the Messiah's followers while He was alive or in the century after He left them - what you would have heard spoken of was Yahweh's theocratic rule on the present world, which He taught them to pray for, "on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt.6:10; Lk.11:2). But how, and indeed, when?

Three different answers to the Kingdom-building mandate were offered by the Judeans of that time, the same as are still being offered today, and all of them were, and are, wrong:

• 1. Join the Essenes at Qumran and separate yourself from the wicked world and wait for Yahweh to do whatever He intends to do (the Quietists);

• 2. Follow Herod's compromise by building fortresses and palaces, get along with your political masters as well as you can, and do as well out of the situation as you can and pray that Yahweh will somehow validate it (the Compromisers); and

• 3. Join the zealots, who took over Herod's palace and fortress at Masada, say your payers, sharpen your swords, make yourselves 'holy' to fight a 'holy war', and hope Yahweh gives you a military victory that will also be a theological victory of good over evil (the Zealots).

Most Christians and Messianics follow the second option of compromising with the world in some form or another. They're the compromisers, using basically the same arguments as the followers of modern 'Kingdom Now' theology. A few, like the Essenes, go and make communities in some remote place (the Quietists) and cut themselves off from the world and wait for something to happen (like judgment, the second coming, etc.), and the rest are involved in a modern version of 20th century 'liberation theology' (the Zealots). But Yah'shua (Jesus) taught a fourth way - the Messianic Israelite Way - and that is something we need to urgently talk more about in the immediate days ahead.

Of course, as most of you know, we do believe that at times is necessary to pursue the 'Quietist' or 'Essene' option, especially in days of intense persecution, but this is only temporary, as with the imminent judgment we're expecting any day now, or with the seven year-long Final Gathering just before Yah'shua (Jesus) returns (but then you have to be operating in the authentic spirit of prophecy to do that, and most aren't).

Next Week we're going to start carefully examining the fish-tank theology of the so-called 'Roman Road', invented by Reformed theologians chief of whom were the Calvinists, and set it alongside the bigger historical picture and redemption of Messianic Israel, and our own mission. The evangelical churches have reduced evangelism to what Andrew Perriman calls the "unimaginative, repetitive level of the door-to-door selling of life insurance", an evangelism calculated not to disturb the status quo of the world, an evangelism that belongs to the 'Compromisers' Gospel'. It only half does the job. The true message of salvation should challenge the bedrock of the Babylonian culture itself, as it did in New Testament times, causing it, when confronted, to rise up in fury, instead of cooperating with it in its diabolical agenda. Now we are paying for that compromise and Yah'shua (Jesus) is being - and in many causes has already been - dethroned from our culture and civilisation. That is why the West is in terminal decline and the churches are going out with it. This is what a heaven-centred theology does, and has done. We are Messianic, Israelite Evangelicals, not Babylonian Evangelicals. More next week. Yahweh bless!

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