Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the third part of our Jonah Enigma series. We have been looking at the life of 9th century BC navi (prophet) Jonah and learning not only about an extraordinary man full of contradictions but seeing in him something of the contradiction that is in ourselves - in all of us. What is that contradiction? It is the difference between the Old Creation and the New, the flesh or carnal nature and the spiritual, the old life and the new birth. The contradiction exists because of the intersection between the Old Creation life and the New one.

Should we then be astonished to discover that Yahweh can, and does, use all sorts of people, including reluctant, disobedient, and unforgiving people like Jonah, to be executors in His estate? Whoever He uses, no matter how much we may occasionally be surprised by His choices, no matter how many mistakes they make or indeed lay down temporary obstacles to the Divine Plan, He gets His work done for the benefit of many and, ultimately, all. And in the case of Jonah, Yahweh rescued the wicked Ninevehites from otherwise certain destruction even though the recalcitrant navi (prophet) wanted them all dead.

The people of that great metropolis had been given 40 days' notice to repent or perish, and at least as far as they were concerned, it really didn't matter how unpolished the bringer of the Divine Message was. Quite understandably, rescue was what was uppermost in their minds! Once they understood and accepted what their fate would be if they did not reform, salvation and how to obtain it was all they cared about. They didn't even know what was going on in Jonah's personal life, much less cared. How would they have responded to his message had they discovered how much he loathed them? I don't know. I suspect they were more concerned about saving their own skins anyway.

Notice, by the way, another one of those round prophetic numbers in '40' (Jonah 3:4) - just as Moses was in the wilderness of Midian 40 years being himself purged, so Israel had to be purged 40 years in Sinai too (Num.14:33-34). Yah'shua (Jesus) was tempted 40 days in the Judean wilderness to prepare Him for His mission (Mk.1:13). Yahweh sent rains 40 days and 40 nights to cleanse the world (Gen.7:4), the land of Israel went through 40 year cycles of peace and then oppression under the Judges, and finally, here, Nineveh is given 40 days to choose between good or evil. 40 is 10 by 4, 10 being the number of completeness or order (as we saw last week) and four being the number of Elohim (God), which is 3, plus 1, which represents a new beginning. This was a new beginning for Nineveh under the order of Yahweh and all they had to do was choose to trust and obey, the very thing Yahweh had to squeeze involuntarily out of Jonah. But then some of us are stubborn like that, aren't we?

A very wise sister, who chooses to be anonymous, recently said something that explains why we all need these cleansing processes, particularly those who are serious about becoming Yahweh's Kingdom servants. She said:

"Your calling is going to crush you. If you're called to mend the broken-hearted, you're going to wrestle with broken-heartedness. If you're called to prophesy, you're going to struggle to control your mouth. If you're called to lay hands, you will battle spiritual viruses. If you are called to preach and to teach the gospel, you will be sifted for the wisdom that anoints your message. If you are called to empower, your self-esteem will be attacked, your successes will be hard fought. Your calling will come with the cups, thorns and sifting that are necessary for your mantle to be authentic, humble and powerful. Your crushing won't be easy because your assignment is not easy. Your oil is not cheap."

We are successful in proportion to our willingness to be crushed so that Yahweh can bring forth this oil but a lot of believers have their limits - points beyond which they won't go, or at the very least beyond which they are reluctant to go, which is probably most of us. It looks as though Jonah dug his heels in and said, 'No more! No further!' I don't know how many times I have said, 'No further!' only to be humbled by teaching like this one. To the willing, Yahweh says:

"I will heal them and reveal to them [an] abundance of shalom (peace) and emet (truth)" (Jer.33:6, NKJV)

We also see in these Assyrians and in this Hebrew navi (prophet) something of the story of Israel and the Messianic Community (Church) throughout the ages, from the very beginnings and onwards to the very endings, the failures and successes of both. Last week we looked very briefly at the 7 congregations of Asia Minor. We understood them to be prophetic photographs, as it were, of the 2,000 years of Christian/Messianic history-to-come right after them, of which we are witnesses of the greater part. So much has happened in two millennia, as messy as - if not far messier than - the life of the navi (prophet) Jonah himself.

I have a very difficult task today and next week, one that I have actually been leading up to for quite some time, and not just in this particular series of sermons. I have not known how to share the message because I have no precedents. There is no one I can really imitate even though there are one or two people who have tremendously inspired me along the way. I have also used various people as sounding-boards and sort of 'half succeeded' but really today and next sabbath are the days when I find out how Yahweh draws all this together. So my prayer is that I can accurately articulate all of this to the satisfaction and glory of Elohim (God) and hopefully to your edification.

We're going to answer the question I posed a week or two ago, and have done many times before that, as to why there are so many Christian and Messianic denominations. More importantly we also need to know how are we going to answer the question, 'Why this particular set-up on earth in which to work out our salvation?' because it isn't a simple one. How do you explain the mess of Christendom to the intelligent, sceptical enquirer who deserves an honest, intelligent answer that isn't an obvious fudge? And how do you explain why Yahweh allowed for this mess, let alone how He enables His people to successfully navigate through the mess without being corrupted by it? And if they are somehow corrupted, which simple observation soon confirms, how it doesn't somehow 'matter' in the final equation of salvation, judgment and rewards? What are His criteria for successfully living in this sludge, this slough, this pig-trough of filth and error?

You, of course, already know why the mess is permitted and that's free agency. If you deny free agency, then you have some really giant problems to solve because you will never be able to explain how an orderly Elohim (God), who uses prophetic numbers to reveal His orderliness, could ever ordain such a mess. It would be meaningness and a bad reflection on His character. So philosophically, and to avoid casting dark shadows on His character, you have to conclude that free will is a major element and explain why it's even allowed. Speaking as a parent (made in His image), I would never ordain my children to have to go through such confusion and suffering if it all boiled down to my personal will alone. But I would permit something like that if that were the only way they could develop through the exercise of free will. But we'll not visit the Calvinist circus today except to remove one stumbling stone which you may have inherited from the reformer from Geneva, which concerns the question of sovereignty, a greatly abused word in Reformed circles. I want to be quite sure that when I use the word 'sovereignty', which is the traditionally understood way in our English language, that I am not misunderstood.

When theologians describe Elohim (God) as being 'sovereign' or having 'sovereignty' they are referring specifically to the wielding of power in the sense that He can - and does - rule as He wishes. It does not, as Calvinists teach, mean that He 'controls'. Thus, on the one hand, the psalmist says that:

"Our Elohim (God) is in the heavens [and] He does whatever He pleases" (Ps.115:3, NRSV)

"The earth [Yahweh] has given to human beings" (v.16, NRSV).

In His sovereignty, Yahweh can choose to grant a level of control or autonomy to His creatures (in other words, free will) as He chooses. Thus Yahweh, in His sovereignty, gives His creatures rule over their own choices and decisions for which they are held morally accountable. So - and this is vitally important to understand - to say that Elohim (God) is 'sovereign' does not mean that He meticulously controls every thought, action, and deed of every single creature on this earth in the sense that 'determinists' in general, and Calvinists in particular, claim.

Therefore the 'mess' here is the result of corporate human choosing, compounded over many thousands of years. What you see is what we made, not what He decreed and yet He steers mankind, and history, though self-made, to His pre-ordained conclusion, plus some key events inbetween, which He absolutely does control and certainly over-rides us in those. Thus while we don't have 100 per cent free will in everything, our freedom of choice is pretty extensive, all things considered. Hence the global mess.

So if you don't believe we have free will, what I have to say won't make a lot of sense, I'm afraid; but equally free agency and the kind of divine sovereignty I have just described, is, I suggest, the only way to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, and you won't need to chalk it up to one of those 'mysteries' that leaves a nasty taste in your mouth because it reflects badly on an utterly deterministic Creator. Thus you won't need to have or experience any 'terror-filled thankfulness' that you weren't preordained to eternal torment at the hands of the Calvinistic god who feels obliged to pour out his 'everlasting wrath' to somehow 'menifest his glory', which is what you have to believe if you don't believe we have authentic libertarian free will and not the robotic 'compatibilistic freedom' believed in by the Calvinist cult.

Thousands of people have been on this quest for answers over the centuries...which is why we have even more denominations! And each of those denominations rests on one or more of these men's theological assumptions. Our task is to get all the assumptions down to the barest minimum so that we don't go constructing houses of cards...and yet more denominations. The goal is for 'NCAY' to eventually disappear by merging into the greater Body which is the Remnant! We are but a temporary vessel so that people like us have a spiritual home on their journey which is why we don't make a fuss or get all upset (as some do) if people feel compelled to move elsewhere in the Body. So the rest of this morning is going to be the briefest of an outline of a 'general idea'. Our emphasis is going to be on the Protestant Reformation, and specifically on the 'Evangelical' part of it. That way we can also get to the heart of our own 'Messianic Evangelical' label.

Every human being has his or her biases that are a function, or product, of so many different factors: our age, gender, upbringing, culture, exposure to diverse philosophies and life experiences, and all of these combine together to form a lens through which we observe and interpret, not just the 'ordinary' world around us, but Scripture in particular. And however irritating that may be to one-time passionate perfectionists like myself, it's unavoidable. To expect everybody to read from Genesis to Revelation, even if they are so filled with the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) that it's coming out their ears, and to come to exactly the same conclusions about everything, is unrealistic and doesn't happen, not because there isn't an Ultimate Realtity (which is a definition of Elohim/God) but because we are finite and therefore limited in what we can see and understand even were we to be given a million lifetimes to figure it all out.

Nevertheless I hope we all agree that as a species - as a creation, as creatures - we have sufficient tools with which to perceive the universe around us so that we can come to as near perfect agreement as is possible within those constraints. We have been 'doing science' now for around 2,500 years and have discovered a working method for determining what physical reality is like, which I believe has to be a reflection of the Divine Mind. That's not to say that things won't change and that we won't have to abandon more of our current ideas about the Cosmos because we will. For example, I believe that the 'Big Bang' theorists will be forced to eventually give way to the idea that the Universe is a giant torus, like an orange with its core removed. Nevertheless, as far as proper science is concerned (and I am excluding the scientifically untestable philosophical claims about the origin of the universe, like evolution and creation which are ultimately untestable because Yahweh Himself was the only observer and is the only One who can verify what actually happened since He did it all) - as far as proper science is concerned, not only have we done remarkably well with the gifts that Elohim (God) has given us, but we have systematically drawn closer and closer to an understanding of what physical reality is in our Universe.

The data that is pouring in through our telescopes in our time is truly fantastic and as an amateur astronomer myself I am daily spellbound by what is being discovered out there. Why, only weeks ago the very first black hole was photographed and a few days ago I looked at the deepest picture in space ever taken, occupying an area no larger than the full moon. And yet within that small area were trillions of galaxies, and within each galaxy tens of billions of stars. So if you think you'll have nothing to do or explore in the eternities, think again!

But here's an important thing to realise: we didn't learn all of of what we know about the cosmos in one day, it took dozens upon dozens of generations of painstaking, very slow work for our knowledge to grow the way it has. From this we who are believers can reasonably conclude that this is the prime method of coming to understanding Yahweh ordained for our species. He did not hand it all to us on a plate and He made it a collective or corporate affair. We depend on the discoveries of each other! And the fact that on the surface this long gradual process seems to resemble the claims made by evolutionists, occultists and others concerning origins, has deceived many into thinking that this is the way everything happens, has happened, and ever will happen. But as I have already mentioned, Yahweh does dramatically intervene or intrude into our existence and sometimes so dramatically that it sends evolutionists, naturalists, occultists, pantheists, atheists and others into a tailspin and into serious damage control mode which they never quite succeed at. Yahweh leaves us enough evidence of Himself - but only just enough - that emunah (faith) must still be the default modus operandi of the human species because without that - without trust - we can never learn or understand what ahavah (love) and chesed (mercy) are. This is the only way for there to be a revelation about grace for the human race. That is why the set-up is the way it is. And grace needs time - lots of time - to become visible and to work its way into the whole because the Creator has ordained that it operate within a matrix of free-will.

The resurrection was, of course, one of those dramatic 'divine interventions' that changed, and still changes, the atheists' and evolutionists' idyll; and the Second Coming of Messiah will finally establish, forever, the emet (truth) of what I am saying for those who have either forgotten about the resurrection or who still stubbornly refuse to believe it. To these major 'divine interventions' we must add the original Creation which looks - again on the surface only - as though it all started with a 'Big Bang', or something like one. We still don't know how Yahweh made everything but we're getting there, little by little - the atheists by all their false starts based on wrong naturalistic assumptions, and the creationists who are still hidebound by a number of competing theories which we won't be look at today as we don't have time.

Which leads me to an important historical truth: we have tended to do theology in much the same way as we have done science - gradually and quite often by trial and error. Worse - and this is the reason our knowledge develops so slowly and requires so many generations - most human beings are usually too competitive to seriously evaluate their systematic and, because the Old Creation nature so dominates their heart, prefer to be contentious rather than reasonable. This is certainly true in theology. I'll tell you this for free: it is very hard to convince yourself to leave a long held theological persepctive and it's almost next to impossible to convince another if they have a lot of time and effort invested in what they believe. That's just a fact of fallen human nature. Put another way, stubbornness and pride, allied to competitiveness, are like a charging rhinoceros. Take my advice - if someone comes at you like that, don't waste your time or risk your inner peace - just step out of the way and let them charge past you. Only when they have worn themselves out will you be able to approach them...maybe. This is why I hate debating and consider it to be laregly useless because those who win debates tend to be those the most skilled at debating, whether their position is the truth or not. And frankly we're not in the competitive business of proving we're 'best'. That's why we point people to our materials and website and invite them to go and feed if they want to. If they don't, they won't. It's why Yah'shua (Jesus) didn't go chasing after the rich young ruler.

My own calling has required me to revise my theology on an almost continuous basis, which I admit has sometimes been tough for those who have had to share their lives with me at home and in the ministry. On the other hand, it does enable you to see other people's perspectives and equips you to uniquely minister to them.

In my own lifetime the way theology is done has changed substantially which I find fascinating, challenging and envigorating. One of the big changes occurred in the 1970's, when I was in my 20's, upon the death of the sceptic Rudolf Bultmann. There is nothing like competing sets of ideas to spark off the imagination, so long as you have the energy, of course. But as I get older, more tired and have less and less available energy to expend, such methods, though at one time exciting - because we were created, in part, to be problem-solvers and to enjoy the process - they frankly do not appeal to me anymore. This isn't about me anymore and my personal pleasures in doing science and theology. The clock isn't on my side now. Now I have a job to do, a very short amount of time in which to do it, in which to prepare the final generation of the Remnant so that they don't have to waste a moment's time gathering in King David's metaphorical building materials with which to build the temple. When the time came for Solomon to built it, everything was in place - his father had prepared everything beforehand. I am following the Davidic imperative and with an ever greater sense of urgency each day now.

That's what I feel I have to do which is why you may detect a sense of urgency in my voice. So I treat every sermon and teaching now as if it's my last. This problam of the denominations and all the conflicting interpretations, often by good, well-meaning and honourable men, has to be resolved now, in my day, at this time. And it will be, I promise you that. And I am just a little cog in that great collective that has been working away at this task for the last 2,000 years. My satisfaction comes in knowing that this will count, just as you will get your work - or are already getting it - and come to know that you too are doing what Yahweh has called you to do and that it counts, even if it's not a giant firework in the sky like Martin Luther in the 16th century who shook Christendom, or N.T.Wright who shook the Pauline theologians in our day, or those firebrands of the next generation, for whom I am saying and writings all these things, who will lead the 12-tribed Remnant home as Moses once did our forefathers before us. Just remember, he who supports a prophet in the prophet's work gets a prophet's reward too (Mt.10:41). Martha is as important as Mary [1]. Everyone has their important part to play, from church greeter to apostolic witness. None is greater than the other in terms of eternity.

So I am going to cut to the chase and dive into the deep-end of the denominational and theological porridge bowl. Let me say off the bat that I don't care what the result is so long as it's the emet (truth) even if it means I have to abandon some cherished gospel hobby-horses of my own. For whatever reasons, and there are many which we don't need to go into here, Reformed Christians - Protestants - early on made the mistake of emphasising one part of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) at the expense of the rest, and then did the same with the New Testament as a whole in respect of the Tanakh or Old Testament. What they did is they elevated the theology of Paul and created out of his writings what leading Pauline scholar N.T.Wright calls a' canon within a canon' [2]. In other words, the writings of Paul have become a separate book of scripture within another book of scripture (the 'New Testament') within another book of scripture (the Bible as a whole), like a Russian doll in three parts and have been made so self-supporting by theologians and Bible-teachers that they no longer view the rest of the Bible as being anything more than a back-up. And though we would be immeasurably impoverished without them, we no more need Paul's writings for salvation than the first believers did before Paul was converted and started doing theology.

Now you all know I am not attacking Paul here, I hope. Indeed, I have vigorously defended the apostle against more than one modern Ebionite cult consisting largely of messianics, many of whom also deny the Deity of Messiah, whom we can lump together as the 'Anti-Paulists'. However, the messianics are right inasmuch as Paul's letters have been elevated far above every other Scripture, including the Gospels and certainly the Torah, by a large number of Protestants, something Paul would have been appalled by. Indeed, when he wrote his epistles he never dreamed they would one day become Scripture and be dissected down to the 'molecular' level by learnèd men until they had been reduced to obscure theological formulas without an ounce of life left in them. Having attended, as I have, some of the theological schools of these Reformed professors, has brought back nightmarish memories of learning Latin grammar at boarding school which had the effect of turning me off languages practically for good. Only later in life when, for instance, I rediscovered Latin as a living language, have I come to love it for the first time, and indeed all other languages too! Take the life out of something then all you're left with is a carcass. In that respect, I am most definitely a charismatic in the broadest sense of that word. I suspect I would have spiritually suffocated had I been forced to breathe the stuffy, rarified theological air of the learnèd professors of Dort, one of the places the Protestant creeds were hammered out, in this instance in the Netherlands.

Protestants aren't the only ones who do this sort of thing. Messianics are just as guilty. They do the same with the Torah, straining it of all life like a kosher butcher would trying to get every last corpuscle of blood out of his meat. We shall return to this point in a minute.

You can't make Paul's writings a 'canon within a canon' without killing it, because it wasn't designed to be used like that anymore than the brain was designed to be used without the rest of the body. Like it or not, your heart, lungs, digestive system, immune system, and genitals are just as important as your head, not forgetting your arms, legs, hands and feet. Every part is important. Remove any part and you have effected a mutilation. And, tragically, many church expressions of the Gospel are little more than ghastly mutilations. It doesn't mean there was anything wrong with all the bits, just that they had been severed from the place where chayim (life) was to be found and for which they were divinely designed; and then were restitched in Dort or Geneva like Frankenstein's monster. I have often made this point, which a lot of brain-centred people don't get, and it's this: theology shapes the vessel in which the chayim (life) is supposed to nestle - it is not the chayim (life) itself. It's the glass, not the wine, and if necessary we can drink the wine of Messiah's life from a crudely carved wooden DDR (Deity-Death-Resurrection of Messiah) cup of the simplest theology, even pre-Pauline theology.

My point, in any case, is this: what matters is that you have been spiritually regenerated and have the New Creation Life in you, the New Birth, the filling of the Ruach (Spirit), the greatest evidence for which is a passionate love for Elohim (God), a passionate love for His mitzvot (commandments) and a passionate love for people, and especially His people. These three go hand-in-hand and if any of these are missing, even if the brain theology is immaculate, then what results is not authentic echad union but a kind of religious necrophilia, union with a theological corpse. Then ahavah (love) ceases to be the main thing but rather the idea of love, rather like the abstract idea of 'humanity' being the thing atheistic communists are in love with rather then with people as individuals.

In 98 AD, when the apostle John may just still have been alive or was recently deceased (his epistles were written somewhere between 85-100 AD), Clement, the third Bishop or Overseer of the Roman Assembly, wrote a long letter to the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) at Corinth, much as Paul had done on previous occasions 40 or so years before, to sort out a new set of spiritual problems. What interests me about this letter, and what I want to end on today, is how Clement reminds these believers how they once were, which was a model congregation. What I love so much about this letter is that it gives us an insight into what authentic Christian or Messianic congregational life was life, and what it should still be like. It contains all the essential elements of the emunah (faith), the ingredients of the Besorah (Gospel) and shows what should rank as the most important things to us too in our pursuit of this New Creation chayim (life). Let me read that to you now - please pay very close attention:

"There was a time when nobody could spend even a short while among you without noticing the excellency and constancy of your emunah (faith). Who ever failed to be impressed by your sober and selfless Christian piety (devotion, duty), to tell of your generous spirit of hospitality, or to pay tribute to the wide range and soundness of your knowledge? It was your habit at all times to act without fear or favour, living by the torot (laws) of Elohim (God) (i.e. the Torah) and deferring (submitting) with correctness to those who were set over you. Your elders were treated with the honour due to them; your young men were counselled to be soberly and seriously minded; your womenfolk were bidden to go about their duties in irreproachable devotion and purity of conscience, showing all proper affection to their husbands; they were taught to make obedience the rule of their lives, to manage their households decorously, and to be patterns of discretion in every way.

"Humility, too, and a complete absence of self-assertion were common to you all; you preferred to offer submission rather than extort it, and giving was dearer to your hearts than receiving. Asking no more than what Messiah had provided for your journey through life, you paid careful heed to His (Messiah's) words, treasured them in your hearts, and kept His sufferings constantly before your eyes. The reward was a deep and shining shalom (peace), a quenchless ardour (fervour, zeal) for well-doing, and a rich outpouring of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) upon you all. You were full of aspirations to holiness; after any involuntary transgression you would stretch out suppliant hands to Almighty Elohim (God) in an agony of piety and devout trustfulness, and implore His mercy. Day and night you would wrestle on behalf of all the brotherhood, that in His mercy and compassion the whole number of His elect might be saved. In your single-minded innocence you harboured no resentments; any kind of faction or schism was an abomination to you. You mourned for a neighbour's faults, and regarded his failings as your own. Never did you grudge a kindly action; always you were ready for any deed of goodness. In the beauty of a pure and heavenly citizenship, whatever you did was done in the fear of Elohim (God), and the chukkim (statutes, ordinances) and mishpatim (judgments, right-rulings) of Yahweh (i.e. the Torah) were engraved on the tables of your hearts" (1 Clement 1b-2, Staniforth) [3].

Is that not a beautiful summary of the New Life in Christ that we daily seek and represent as the Besorah (Gospel)? Not only does this give us a window into what the second generation believers had been like but it ought to inspire us to seek after the same things: a strong faith, constancy, sobriety, selflessness, devotion, generosity, knowledge, equity, a love of the Torah, submission to those in authority, respect for elders, devotion, discretion, and obedience of the sisters to their husbands, humility, a fervour for well-doing, a focus on the sufferings of Yah'shua (Jesus), compassion, evangelism, innocence, and so on. It is a beautiful, inspiration summary of all we seek.

Next week we shall conclude this series as I have had to once more divide what would otherwise have been another very long sermon into two. I'd like to invite you to read the whole of the First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians as it is very inspirational. Until next time, may Yahweh bless you all and I look forward to seeing you again.

Endnotes

[1] See The Mary-Martha Principle
[2] N.T.Wright, The New Testament and the People of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol.1 (SPCK, London: 1992), p.21
[3] Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: 1968), pp.23-24

Comments from Readers

[1] "May YHWH restore you!! We learn so much from your Wisdom. You are a Treasure to us. I learned so much today. I'm truly grateful. Thank you for today!" (LM, USA, 20 May 2019)