Friday, February 4, 2011

Are You Jewish?

This is a question that I have started to get and I realized it might be best answered on my blog. No, I am not a Jew by blood (at least not that I know of). I am simply a follower of the Jewish Messiah and I seek to honor Him in all my ways. If I am following my Messiah (who was Jewish) then some of my ways might look pretty Jewish. That is to be expected if I follow the Master. I dont call myself a Christian, A Messianic.. none of those labels suit me. I prefer to identify myself as a Follower of the Messiah only. I have spent the past few months seeking answers to questions I always had and finding amazing truths that I had never known before. I have discovered that some of the things I had been taught were not founded in Scripture and I also discovered that there are many things in Scripture that I was not taught. I am so grateful that Yahweh has brought me to a place of truly seeking Him with my whole heart. Never before I have felt such a deep connection to my Savior. I literally feel as though now I am walking in His footsteps.


I have taken an excerpt from the website “Following the Ancient Paths” to further explain my new path since she says it well.

…HaShem chose specific people to be His special treasure, the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Through these people He intended to make Himself known to all the world. He instructed them how He had created them to live and how to know Him. We have the record of these instructions in the Torah, often referred to as the Pentatuch. Torah means “instruction” and His instructions are recorded for us in the first 5 books of the Bible. He called His chosen people for a purpose and made them holy, meaning He set them apart from the rest of the people, so that through them He would be made known in the world. Scripture records for us how these plans have played out time and again. People who were not born into the family of Abraham would see the goodness of the G-d of Israel and be drawn to Him. They were grafted in, adopted into the family, from as early as the Exodus from Egypt. We have examples of Caleb, Rahab, Ruth and many more. This is how it was always intended: His light would shine through His chosen children and draw others to come and serve Him. This concept is not new to Christians because we remember that we are grafted into the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by our faith. Shaul (Paul) teaches that the mystery of the Gospel is that Gentiles are accepted, considered fellow heirs with the Jews, based simply on their heartfelt faith. We, for our part, are strongly warned not to become arrogant and forget that it is we who are grafted into them and this is the reason Shaul was a prisoner in chains. Shaul knew full well that the grafted in Gentiles would grow in number to such an extent that there would be more young children (in faith and understanding) than adults (in faith and understanding) and that if the children didn’t honor and respect their elders, we would stray off course. He also was very aware of the workings of the Adversary within the body of believers, our current struggles with the Church are certainly not new ones.

So, we are grafted into Israel. What does that mean? What did that mean to the Shaul (Paul), his fellow leaders and to his intended audience in the first century? It means that we are the ones who converted. What did we Gentiles convert to? In the days of the Apostles there were many different sects of Judaism, just like today there are many different denominations of Christianity. We can read in Acts 24 that the Jewish leaders of the day accepted the growing movement of believers in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah as a new sect of Judaism. It wasn’t only the leaders in Jerusalem that understood this, but the leaders in Rome understood this as well. It is also important to understand that Shaul (Paul) never forsook his place in Israel as a Jewish Pharisee, he held to the strictest of traditions and teachings through his entire life. Shaul never converted to anything nor did he create a new religion, he simply accepted that Yeshua IS the long awaited Messiah and shifted his discipleship from the prominent Gamaliel (highly revered even today) to Yeshua. Had Shaul created a whole new religion he would be worthy of stoning according to HaShem’s very teaching in the Torah. Any prophet that would come and lead the people away from HaShem or His teachings was a false prophet. What Shaul did do was rise to the position of a leader in this new sect of Judaism, a sect that accepted Gentiles with open arms based on their faith in Yeshua and not a series of rituals. Shaul wanted the new converts (us) to hold fast to the teachings and the traditions that he taught and modeled for us. We can see in historical records that there was always a remnant of Messianic Jewish believers (whether they be Jew or Gentile). This early movement never died, though it was greatly suppressed. Today Christianity is beginning to remember that she has a root in Israel and the implications of this memory brings startling consequences. Today people are beginning to really look at why it is the Church isn’t mentioned at even once in any of the Prophets – because we are grafted into Israel.

I am an adopted child of Yahweh! I am so grateful!

2 comments:

  1. I agree! Do you know what's funny? I wrote almost the exact same thing on my blog... on the same day... =) Check it out - http://athomewithkare.com

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  2. Oh wow! I just read your post! That is crazy how similar they were :) Thanks for sharing! I will try to follow your blog as well! Love the information you share!

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