Congregation Shema Yisrael

Actually, the title should probably say, “What did First Century Gentile Believers in Yeshua do on Friday Night?”, but that’s way too long and ungainly for a blog title. Why would I ask such a question, though? Something prodded my memory this morning.

Last summer, I had posted a comment on the Messianic Jewish Musings blog about the “split” between First Fruits of Zion and Tim Hegg. I don’t want to get into the whole issue, but when I commented on the blog, I subscribed to any further comments that were made in the blog. None were forthcoming…until this morning.

This morning’s comment wasn’t what made me start pondering, but revisiting the whole situation around FFOZ’s “theology shift” relative to differences in Torah compliance between Jews and Gentiles triggered a chain of thoughts. If you need some background on all this, visit FFOZ founder Boaz Michael’s blog article Reasoning Together for at least some of the details. The specific piece of this perspective that I am still chewing on has to do with the differences between the Gentile believer’s and the Jewish person’s approach to Shabbat. Let me explain.

First of all, I haven’t changed my approach or practice in how I express devotion to God, the Messiah, or the Torah based on any of the various articles, commentaries, and cross talk about how FFOZ currently presents its take on the Messianic movement. Like any concerned and conscientious believer, I take in the information that comes my way, do my best to view it through the lens of the Bible and the Spirit, and proceed in what I sincerely believe is God’s desire for my life. I’m sure my observance isn’t perfect, but like everyone else, I’m learning.

However, I started wondering how all this worked itself out in the First Century Messianic communities (churches), particularly those that had a mixed Jewish and Gentile make up. I’ll try not to go into all the various implications, but for example, how did they celebrate the Shabbat together? As part of my attempt to understand what FFOZ’s change meant, I exchanged a few emails with Boaz Michael last fall, and he explained, in part, that FFOZ’s current position is, while Gentiles are encouraged to embrace the Shabbat, Festivals, and Kosher Food laws, they (we) are not obligated to observe them. FFOZ says we Gentiles have a divine invitation (I understand that to mean “invitation from God”) to embrace these aspects of Torah, but no actual obligation. I haven’t found a reference to the idea of “divine invitation” in the Bible, and particularly in the Apostolic Scriptures, so for me, the jury is still out on this concept.

Back to the Shabbat, though. Try to picture this. It’s the First Century, somewhere in the diaspora nations inhabited by Romans, Greeks, and Jews. Yeshua has risen and ascended, and his disciples, chiefly Paul, have been spreading the Good News “first to the Jew and then to the Gentile”. Messianic congregations or “churches” are springing up at a lightning-quick pace, and Gentile worship of the Jewish Messiah has caught on like wildfire (please forgive the cliches). However, consider this:

Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barabbas) and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers. With them they sent the following letter: The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

“Greetings. We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul – men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell”. -Acts 15:22-29

This, of course, is the famous Jerusalem letter, apparently outlining the requirements for Gentile believers in Yeshua. If we accept these conditions as the entire body of requirements, then this is all Gentiles must do to enter into worship of Messiah and God. Notice, among other Torah commands, the Shabbat isn’t listed. That begs a very important point. How were Jews and Gentiles able to worship side-by-side?

Think about it. Even if we restrict our topic to the Shabbat, it would mean Gentiles had no obligation to show up in the synagogue on Friday night or Saturday morning. Sure, the Jews would, but the Jews always did, in obedience to the Torah commandments, but supposedly, the First Century Gentile believers weren’t bound by those commandments. Did they stay at home on Saturday? If so, were they ever able to enter a house of worship? If so, when…on Sunday?

OK, I’m being ridiculous. The various letters of Paul paint a picture of Jews and Gentiles worshiping together. They weren’t segregated from each other. But it is confusing…at least if you try to look at the situation where the Jews were required to have a Shabbat rest and worship and the Gentiles weren’t. The Jerusalem Council supposedly wrote their letter to answer a lot of this confusion but at least for me, it’s introduced more questions than answers. If Jews and Gentiles worshipped with each other in a united community and they were intended to do so, what did they do? It doesn’t make sense that they’d do different things in one worship service, does it?

Would the Gentiles pray out of the same Siddurim? If so, what happened when they came to any passages that specifically referred to the person praying as a Jew? If the boss told a Gentile believer to work late on Friday night after sundown, would the believer be OK with that, or would they say it was their Shabbat and they would not do any of their regular work? A Jew could say they were obligated to have their rest, but not necessarily the Gentile. But if that’s true, what do we do with this?

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates (emphasis mine). For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. -Exodus 20:8-11

What do you do with “nor the alien (stranger, “Ger” in Hebrew) within your gates”? If a First Century Gentile became a believer in Yeshua, wouldn’t Shabbat observance be incumbent upon them based on this commandment? I don’t mean optional compliance, but actual required observance based on the Torah. When Gentiles worship the Jewish Messiah along with the Jewish believers, aren’t we inside the Jewish community? Aren’t we Gentiles “strangers within the Jewish gates?”

I look at the worship style of my congregation and fully realize that it’s based largely on traditional, modern, Jewish synagogue worship. I often wonder what the original worship template was like in the First Century. What sort of worship took place in a community of Jews and Gentiles offering praise, prayer, and honor to Messiah Yeshua, redeemer of the world? It makes sense to me that the Gentiles would enter into Jewish synagogues and do what they saw their Jewish counterparts doing, but I can’t possibly know that for sure. Did the Gentiles follow a different pattern, including how they treated the Shabbat, or did they do as the Jews did, but voluntarily and not because they were required?

As I said, I can’t possibly know the answer, because the Bible is silent on the exact order of service in diaspora congregations. The Bible is also silent about any differences in the approach to Torah between Gentiles and Jews besides what’s recorded in Acts 15 and 21, and even then, the passages are open to interpretation. If I were a traditional Christian, I could just fall back on “replacement theology” or a “split theology” and say that the path for Gentile Christians is substantially different than for Rabbinic Jews. Christians worship on Sunday and Jews worship on Saturday. Christians use a Hymnal and Jews use a Siddur. It’s all “separate but equal” and that’s that.

But that couldn’t have been how it worked out in the First Century. What did the Gentile believer do on Friday just before the Sun went down. Did the wife in the home light the candles and at least attempt to say the blessings in Hebrew? Were the ancient Hebrew songs sung in the Gentile home, honoring God, Messiah, and Shabbat? Even if the Gentile family was told by the Jewish council that Shabbat compliance was not laid upon them, did the Gentiles take it upon their shoulders as a “light yoke” anyway?

It’s the answer that makes the most sense to me, but of course, I’m guessing. It makes sense to me that the early Gentile believers would take the Shabbat on board, because they loved God, not out of raw obligation. The Torah without love of God is dead. The document doesn’t have a life of its own apart from the Spirit of God. We call Yeshua our “living Torah”; the only being in human form ever to live out the freedom of a completely perfect Torah existence. If you love God and you love the Messiah, you want to walk in the pattern and footsteps laid out in the Torah. It’s why I observe the Shabbat today and it’s why I believe the First Century Gentile Messianics also observed the Shabbat. Of course, there’s this:

Every native Israelite shall do these things in this way, in offering a sacrifice, with a pleasing aroma to the LORD. And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a sacrifice, with a pleasing aroma to the LORD, he shall do as you do. For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.” -Numbers 15:13-16

And the foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord, and to worship Him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant – These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. -Isaiah 56:1-7

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. -2 Timothy 3:16

Based on the above-referenced passages, it’s not so clear to me that Gentile obligation to the Torah is limited to the conditions outlined by the letter from the Jerusalem Council. In fact, the scriptures from Numbers and Isaiah seem to be very explicit that there is One law and one rule…for you and for the stranger (Heb: Ger) who sojourns with you and that Gentiles and Jews are expected to observe the Shabbat without desecrating it.

At the end of it all, we each are indeed obligated to call upon God and to ask Him how we are to serve Him, not assuming we know the answer ahead of time. My congregation has spent the past 15 months studying the 613 Commandments in an attempt to understand the differences between Gentile and Jewish obligation to Torah. The class is ongoing and probably will be for years to come. Our understanding is based on the idea that Gentiles are grafted in to the “root of Jesse” and we’re trying to discover just how deep that grafting goes.

As a Gentile, whether you consider yourself invited or obligated, many of the Scriptures point to Jews and Gentiles worshipping in one community and with one practice. I celebrate a Shabbat rest because God did in Genesis 2 and because I get to spend 24 full hours (OK, not quite…I have to sleep sometime) with my God. Nothing in the Word of God tells me I am wrong in doing so. I pray with a Siddur because it speaks to my heart. I love the glow of the Shabbat candles because they remind me of my “light of the world.” I don’t know for sure what Gentiles did in the First Century to worship Yeshua, but I suspect that it wasn’t too much different than what I do today.