Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah. I am glad to see everyone has survived after the two-hour marathon I more-or-less forced you all to run with me last week and that you are none the worse for wear-and-tear. My only comfort is that when I was in the Ukraine in the 1990's that it was normal for people to sit through 2-3 hour long sermons every Sunday! One of you commented that I had given four sermons rolled into one last week. Guilty as charged. At any rate, I have chosen to end the series on Jonah and to move on to the next important item on the agenda. So in some ways we're just continuing where we left off. This will be considerably shorter than last time though perhaps long by the standards of someone with Attention Deficiency Disorder!

Last week I introduced what for most of you, I suspect, was a new concept, the notion of the phronema, which is well known to the Eastern Church but largely unknown in the Western Church. This word, roughly translated from the Greek, means 'the mind of the messianic community'. To understand the Bible, and the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) in particular, you have to get into the very soul of the first believers who used it. Sometimes we forget that the greatest of the Saviour's prayers - His last recorded one (the High Priestly Prayer), recorded alone by the apostle John for us - states again and again that the goal of the Messianic Community (Church), which in Yah'shua's (Jesus') day was the first living generation but which by extension means all generations (both the living and the so-called 'dead') - the goal is that all its members be 'one' or echad, in the same way that Yah'shua (Jesus) was, and is, one or echad with Yahweh, our Heavenly Father. For that is the only way the curse of denominationalism will be lifted and the rising Remnant will become a single Body of Believers.

Moreover, we also saw in the Jonah Series that you can't get to the heart of the Besorah (Gospel) by bypassing the gospels and heading straight for the 'Pauline canon within the New Testament canon' as Protestants tend to. Indeed, the great error of Protestantism is, in my view, if I may borrow the words of N.T.Wright, that:

"...the main body of the four gospels is not theologically load-bearing. For many Christians it would have been quite sufficient if Jesus (Yah'shua) of Nazareth had been born of a virgin, died on a cross, and never done anything inbetween, except perhaps lived a sinless life. The four gospels then function for many as the dispensable back story for the gospel as preached by Paul"

"The gospels are the pre-prandial nibbles - the chips and the dips - before you go to the table and sit down for the red meat of Pauline theology." [1]

Remember this is coming from the world's leading Pauline theologian today, if not the leading theologian overall. And I totally agree with him. So, this 'canon-within-a-canon' is the unfortunate position of many Protestants, and especially Evangelicals, and it's back-to-front. Remember what I said about hierarchies of authority in Scripture last time. The analogy I would use is the Pauline epistles are the icing on the cake of the four gospels - you can do without the icing but you cannot do without the cake. Or better still, the gospels are the red-meat and vegetables and the Pauline writings the sauce. The emet (truth) is first and foremost about meat, not sauce - cake, not icing.

One thing you rapidly discover as you read the writings of the sub-apostolic fathers of the first five centuries, is that though they did not have doctrinal unity in every matter, which I suspect is probably going to happen whenever finite men try to express infinite concepts (who, after all, can comprehend the full scope of the incarnation or atonement?) - though they arrived at different conclusions regarding the eternities (the majority were universalists, followed by the minority who followed and promoted the eternal damnation or annihilationist positions) - they did not make these issues tests of faith. Accordingly there was a broad-based unity. Only when they started excommunicating and finally executing fellow believers, as both the Catholic and Protestant hegemons did in their respective areas of control, when opponents would not submit to their respective interpretations of the Besorah (Gospel), did real unity break down and Christians started doing the work of the devil for him by torturing and killing one another. The Pope, Luther and Calvin all had blood on their hands. We are supposed to be known by our love for one another, not by divisive theology, and especially not when that leads to persecution and blood-letting

You will not find believers in the New Testament period executing or killing one another. Yahweh certainly struck down one or two, like Ananias and Saphira (Ac.5:1-11), to remind us that some things are a matter of life-and-death but that the death sentence for those who refuse to repent has merely been postponed so long as we remain alive. Now it is true that believers of the first century did not find themselves in a theocratic society where they held the reins of government so they wouldn't have been in a position of power. Many believe, and forcibly argue, that that was a good thing because no sooner had Constantine given Christians state power did they start to abuse it, and the killing began. I agree with them.

Theocracies are a risky business. Nevertheless we do have to have state power. The problem is ensuring that there is enough to ensure stability but simultaneously limiting it so that despots do not abuse it. The alternative - lawlessness (2 Pet.3:17) - is far worse and it is no accident that 'lawlessness' is one of Satan's titles (2 Thes.2:8-9). So before the Constantinian era, before Christians began to enjoy temporal power, they were limited to excommunicating miscreants for real or imagined infractions of doctrine or practice only. They did not have the right to execute anyone, a limitation the religious Jews had imposed on them in Judea, Galilee and the other Promised land territories ruled by the Romans. You will see, as you read the New Testament, that the most common grounds for exclusion from the Messianic Community (Church) were sexual immorality like adultery and only later were believers excommunicated for theological errors or 'heresies'. It's important we know what these were because people get excommunicated from churches and messianic kehilah's for all sorts of bizzare and unscriptrural reasons - and just as bad, they often don't get excommunicated for things they should be excommunicated for like adultery or child abuse. As ever, there are two extremes with a spectrum inbetween.

When it comes to theological heresy being raised in the New Testament, you will find the issue mostly being addressed by the apostle John. His greatest concern is manifestly with gnosticism which had started infilitrating the Body of Christ and apparently doing tremendous damage. The gnostics denied that Yah'shua (Jesus) had "come in the flesh" (1 Jn.4:2) and therefore denied the incarnation, the atonement and the physical resurrection, all central, indispensible or cardinal doctrines of the faith. This in turn led the heretics to invent excuses about not maintaining sexual purity and resulted in licentiousness which we find mentioned in the Book of Revelation (Rev.2:6,15). Clear instructions are given to immediately remove any who believed or practiced such abominations if they refused to repent.

Part of the phronema that we spoke about last week and which I have already reminded you of, is that we have a mental, emotional, and spiritual connection to the attitudes, morality, spirit, and overall sense of righteous conduct that was what was defined in and by the early Messianic Community (Church). Anyone, for example, who does not react with horror to pedophilia or child abuse is not connected to the original phronema and therefore does not enjoy the Ruach (Spirit) and may never have been spiritually regenerated in the first place. Anyone who is not appalled by adultery, violence, or any of the things the apostles spoke against is likewise disconnected from the New Creation and may not even be enjoying it. And we know from the history of the Messianic Community (Church) that many unbelievers snuck in and poisoned the congregations from within, just as they have always done and just as they are still doing. Both Paul and Jude (Judah) issued these warnings:

"...some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) and to make us slaves..." (Gal.2:4, NIV).

"Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the emunah (faith) that was once for all entrusted to the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones). For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our Elohim (God) into a license for immorality and deny Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) our only Sovereign and Master [2]" (Jude 3-4, NIV).

The more you know about the emet (truth) the more readily you can identify error. The deeper you go and the more revelation you receive, the more readily it becomes possible to find fault. And as you know people not only find fault over the tiniest of things these days but even exclude or proclaim as heretics or non-believers those who don't pronounce the Divine Name right (as they believe it should be pronounced) or those who fail to embrace certain nuances of certain man-made creeds. The Western and Eastern Churches split over a single word, the 'Filoque Heresy' and then, in the course of another 1,000 years, radically diverged in a number of areas.

I myself have been excommunicated once in my life so I know what it feels like to be viewed and treated as an 'apostate' or 'heretic'. I was even informed that I had 'lost the Holy Ghost' in consequence of my expulsion which was over doctrinal disagreements. I don't in retrospect remotely regret losing membership in that church today because I was thrown out of a cult, so it was a good thing, even if the pain and broken relationships that resulted was very painful. Yet this sort of thing happens all the time, and not just in churches, but in every quarter of life. People terminate relationships for all sorts of reasons. I have lost friends each time I have made a doctrinal shift because loyalty to a doctrine - a mental idea - was more important to them than to the human relationship. I don't pretend that this is an easy thing. Everybody in this life has to work out where they are going to draw their lines - whether they are to going to be more liberal or more conservative - more laid back or zealous - in their responses to doctrinal differeneces between brethren who were once formerly agreed. I believe that these are not only some of the most important choices we make in life but also the most risky and dangerous, remembering that we are all changing. How much doctrinal slack do we cut those who are honest seekers but who view certain scriptures differently to us? I personally believe that how we treat other people is far more important to Yahweh than our loyalty to ideas which may, in time, be seen to be wrong. You have to therefore decide, as early on as you can, what the cardinal doctrines and practices are that you are going to defend tooth-and-nail, where you are going to draw your lines in the sand. What doctrines are so sacred that it is worth breaking fellowship over it with a fellow believer who is no less seeking to honour Elohim (God) as you are? There is no simple answer.

The story of the north African bishop, Augustine of Hippo, is a good illustration of what I mean. He was born in the 4th century (354 AD) and died in the 5th (430 AD). This man had a huge impact on the Western Church - Catholicism and Protestantism - because of the theology he developped which has both blessed and corrupted Western thought. If you've never read his 1,000+ page book, City of God, I recommend that you do so if you are well grounded in your faith. However, you also need to know something of his history and the changes he made in his life. His is a very Latin (Roman) view of the Besorah (Gospel).

Before becoming a Christian, Augustine had been a member of an extreme Gnostic sect called the Manicheans for ten years. He was very ashamed of his past in that cult. The Gnostics, which had been around long before Christianity or Messianism, were famous because they believed that things were already set or pre-determined. They were dualists, regarding everything spiritual as 'good' and everything physical as 'evil'. They believed that people were predetermined to 'heaven' or 'hell' - the 'elect' vs. the 'non-elect'. American Augustine scholar, Dr.Ken Wilson, who is both a theologian and a medical doctor (an absolutely brilliant man, in my opinion), received his doctorate from Oxford University with his thesis, Augustine's Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to Non-free Free Will: A Comprehensive Methodology. He studied everythinhg Augustine had ever written, in chronological order, in order to trace his evolving beliefs. That's a huge body of literature - 113 books and treatises, over 200 letters, and more than 500 sermons! There's actually an Italian website that contains much of this translated into English [3]. What's interesting to see is how people chop and change throughout their lives and to realise that for serious thinkers this is quite normal.

Ken Wilson discovered, in the course of doing his thesis, that there are many similarities between the Gnostics of the 3-5th centuries AD and Calvinists of the 16th century in respect of the doctrine of determinism. Now the Manicheans may be said to have been the 'pinnacle of Gnosticism' - if you want a full unfolding of what Gnosticism was and still is, study this sect! They taught that there was a good God and an evil god or fallen angel called the Demiurge, and that the evil God created the world. They were very libertine, teaching that you could have all the sex you wanted with whomever you wanted and it would not be a sin. But they also taught that if you conceived a child in the womb that that was a sin because thereby you were bringing evil into the world. That child was, according to the Manichean system, damned at birth because he was physical. Catholics and traditional Protestants like the Lutherans believe that babies that are unbaptised are hell-bound, an idea they originally got from the Gnostics. The good God, in this false religious system, has to awaken the dead sinner and infuse faith into the him in order to resurrect him and have him believe. Doesn't that remind you of some 'Christian' doctrinal systems that we are familiar with?

To cut a long story short, fascinating though it is - I personally love biographies because they make the theology and beliefs of a particular time period come alive (it's how you make contact with various phronema's, both the good and the bad) and can properly weigh things - so to cut this fascinating story short, what Wilson discovered was that all the elements of Calvinistic determinism came not only from Augustine but ultimately from Manichean Gnosticism viâ this man. Augustine wrestled with his soul after coming to Christ (his father was a pagan, his mother a Christian), and doctrinally went back and forth several times during his life, sometimes terrified to be tained by the sexually immoral Manichaean way of life which he had indulged to his shame, but equally sometimes drawn to its deterministic philosophy about hell. A similar struggle took place in the gtreat and brilliant C.S.Lewis who admitted a fascination for paganism which you see heavily influencing his seven Narnia books. That's a whole story in itself. In a nutshell, Augstine does what so many people who were involved in extremists sects do when they convert to Christinity or Messianism - they end up embracing the diametric opposite of what they believed before in a way to 'compensate' for their former sins in a gesture of self-loathing.

Like I said, Augustine is important because his life experience shaped his theology and the whole of Western Christendom's distored phronema. And though Protestantism in particular has spawned tens of thousands of denominations that cover a whole range of doctrinal beliefs, it still retains much of its hostility to a number of biblical doctrines thanks to the 'spirit' it carries. Where does this spirit come from? Many places, not least the pagan Neo-platonism Augustine acquired in Milan, where he came under the influence of Bishop Ambrose too. But that too is another story.

The upshot of all of this was that we can now trace where so much of our bad theology in the West has come from. The influence of individuals in the transmission and preservation of false doctrines is, to me, alarming, but then all historians will tell you that history can turn on small hinges. Just think of the negative influence of Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible which propagated Augsutine's ideas about eternal punishment in much the same way that the Scofield Reference Bible has propagandised so much false doctrine about the Rapture and Zionism. That is why it is so important to step out of one tradition and look at others. That is why I advise believers to study the writings of the first 500 years of the Body of Messiah. Augustine was a traditionalist most of the time and then allowed himself to come under the influence of false teachings. Most of the objectionable Western Roman doctrines come from him, plus some of the good ones. It all depends which writings of his you read. He also went back and changed some of his earlier writings to conform to his later beliefs, something we all do, so be careful with his book, City of God, which reflects his later position. I certainly have changed my positions so don't be surprised or horrified if you find an early version of our website or printed materials with articles containing doctrines I have since revised or even abandoned.

That's why I advise people to be slow in judging others and to remember we are all finite beings. We have the right to change our opinions in either direction, for better or worse. We just need to decide where we set the boundaries in our interactions with other believers and non-believers because there are always consequences. We interface with people on so many levels, again for good and bad. Will we be puritans or libertines? And in which areas of life? I count as my brothers and sisters in Messiah believers from lots of different traditions who hold to all sorts of theologies, because what's important to me is whether they have the New Life in them or not. With every single one of them I interact differently. Not every door to my mind and heart is open to them on every level. But in Messiah I am most definitely able to accept them as human beings and to love them as He does. I am sure you are all familiar with the Venn diagram I created years ago which helps me maintain perspective in my relationships with others and to seek the proper balance in myself. As is true of life in general, you have to somehow combine all-inclusiveness with selective exclusiveness. You just have to know what to do with who, with obviously your most intimate relationships ideally being with your spouses, remembering that nothing in this 'Old Creation' world is ideal. You learn how to do this over time making lots of mistakes along the way. Better to have made mistakes than not to have tried at all, but be circumspect and cautious, not rash.

So we have talked a bit more about the concept of the phronema. The other important thing I drew your attention to last week was the first century understanding of the idea of the Davar, Logos, or Word. I pointed out that it did not first and foremost mean something written, or even spoken, for that matter (though it certainly has that very important secondary meaning), but rather it is the operational power of Yahweh, and specifically, the 'Lesser Yahweh' or the Son, the Person of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) that lies behind either the spoken or written Word. And by 'operational power' is meant the power of the Creator in action and, importantly for us, our personal encounter with that power by which Yahweh's Reality and ours interface and then intersect. This meeting is precidely the same kind of place where the Elohim (God) of Israel acted decisively for the salvation of the world, not merely by getting apostles to put pen and ink to paper for us to later read and make a mental vessel with which to contain and shape our thoughts, but by getting Divine Ruach (Spirit) to enter into human flesh and blood in the Person of Yah'shua (Jesus) to die on a cross and then merge the two permanently and inseparably together as a single New Creation - a new reality which we, even now, can begin to partake of and experience because the Ruach (Spirit) can enter and inhabit us too.

Our goal - our objective, indeed our greatest passion - must be to interact with this New Resurrection Creation to the extent it is available to us now prior to our actual resurrection at some future date (for most of us, after we have died), so that we can know Yahweh beyond merely reading text (important though that is) - beyond merely creating a mental picture of the Ultimate Reality. We want - I want...or ought to want...to enter into that Ultimate Reality, here and now, even if it is just to brush alongside it. We want - I want - to make direct contact with the Divine Operational Power - the Word - and not simply ourselves which is mostly what we do when we read Scripture and then construct what really amounts to a model in our heads as to what the Ultimate Reality should be like to touch, feel, and experience. Put another way, we want to enter into a sacred relationship. We want to actually know Him and not simply know about Him. Agreed?

What I am saying is this. There is a very real risk of indulging in what is called solipsism, the notion that self is the only knowable, or even the only existent, thing (from the Latin solus, 'alone', and ipsé, 'self'). And here's the problem: Self can so easily be mistaken for Elohim (God). People make this mistake all the time. What then happens is that you end up creating a mental picture of what you think Yahweh should look like, cloaking it with the ideas about Him which you read in Sctripture, and end up talking to yourself in prayer thinking you are talking to Him. You might even hear a voice in your head that you think is Yahweh but which in reality is yourself (or worse). When you're doing that, you're not really praying but giving what's called a soliloquy - that's what you do when when you start talking without, or regardless of, the presence of hearers, in this instance, Elohim (God). Perhaps the most famous soliloquy in Western literature is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, To Be, or Not to Be, as Hamlet debates whether he should take his own life or not.

Every single one of us, in praying to Yahweh, actually wants to talk to Him and not to ourselves. We want to know Him as He really is, just as we here are interacting with one another, listening and speaking. It is through dialoguing or having a conversation that we both come to know the One we are conversing with as well as becoming known. People do, of course, unfortunately, talk to themselves, particularly if they're very lonely. But we aren't alone, and we begin our conversation with Elohim (God) by acknowledging that in emunah (faith): 'I know You're real, Father!' Wherever we are, the Creator is there when we call upon Him in the Name of Yah'shua (Jesus). How? Because He, Yah'shua (Jesus), is like us (flesh and blood) but He is also like Yahweh (Divine Ruach or Spirit), and these two aspects - human and divine - have become joined together in resurrection power which is active, operational, and personal - personal because Elohim (God) became like us in the Incarnation.

My goal is to help those of you who sometimes struggle with prayer, which is all of us at one time or another, so that you can avoid operating in fantasy and instead always deal with reality. To do that we need to briefly re-engage a concept which I first planted here a few weeks ago, namely, the idea of Scripture as primarily being a story that is retold again and again. We'll be coming back to this again another time.

Part of the problem of denominationalism - largely thanks to Protestantism but not exclusively because of Protestants - is that the mistake is made of emphasising doctrine before life. Again, so that nobody misunderstands or misquotes me, I am not at all so much as even hinting that doctrine is unimportant or that we do not have to do theology, and do it well. Far from it! What I am saying is that doctrines are secondary or ancillary. In other words, while doctrines help explain the story of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) they are not the story itself, and the story is the main thing. The doctrines are less true than that which the doctrines are about! The primary language - the language that is more adequate than the doctrinal language, and the language which believers must always prefer - is the 'lived language'. Theology is important, but unless your theology is alive, your theology is worse than useless, like hugging the photograph of a person rather than the living person himself. Little children understand what life is and where to find it, long before their minds are developped enough to 'do doctrine', which is probably one reason, I am sure, the Saviour said that "the kingdom of Elohim (God) belongs to such as these" (Mark 10:14, NIV).

In other words - and this is where the notion of phronema comes in once again - we not only have to hear and relate the Cosmic Story but we have to become part of the story itself before it can actually become alive to us. That is what is meant, I believe, in the Apostles' Creed, when we declare:

"We believe in ... the communion of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones)"

"And they (the qodeshim, saints, set-apart ones) continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising Elohim (God) and having favour with all the people. And the Master added to the Messianic Community (Church) daily those who were being saved ('given chayim/life' - HRV)" (Acts 2:42-47, NKJV).

How do we experience this 'intersectionality', if I can call it that - the meeting of the Divine Ruach (Spirit) of Yahweh with ourselves as nefeshot or living souls? In this passage we learn what the essential elements are and, O, how controversial this passage is! It is controversial because it is immediately seen to be very physical whilst also being very spiritual - because the physical here is made spiritual by the spirit - which is a communal spirit. This is corporate activity, and whilst there is, of course, private or 'secret closet' communion between each individual believer and his or her Creator (Mt.6:6), the key to that working as it is supposed to work - for this 'intersectionality' to occur, this meeting of heaven and earth, the invisible spiritual and the visible physical - is what? Let's list its contents:

• 1. Continuing steadfastly in the "apostles' doctrine" or teaching;
• 2. Continuing steadfastly in "fellowship" with other believers (coming together, assembling);
• 3. Continuing steadfastly in "breaking of bread" (I'll come back to that in due course); and
• 4. Continuing steadfastly in "prayers".

When the believers complied, this resulted in "wonders and signs" being done through those with the apostolic calling. Luke then restates point #2 or "fellowship" on a "daily" basis which consisted of voluntary sharing (this was not forced sharing or socialism/communism). Then Luke repeats a second time the "breaking of bread" but this time "from house to house" and with "gladness" and "simplicity of heart", all the while "praising Elohim (God)" and "enjoying the good will of the people" (NLT)

Now if we today are to partake of the phronema of the early qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones), here is where we need to 'touch down' by making wheels connect with tarmac. We therefore need to know what's going on, and if we're going to be successful in that, we must do accurate history. So what's happening here? A lot and it all centers in believers' homes - believers whom, we must assume, lived in close proximity to one another. This bespeaks a certain amount of gathering. What else is happening? There's a lot of sharing of things and a lot 'eating' going on, isn't there? Not only that, but it's very spontaneous, it's joyful, and it is all done in what one Bible version describes as "simplicity of heart" or "sincerity of heart" (NIV).

This is as 'real' as it gets. It's a picture, a dynamic, a reality, a spirit, a movement that is authentic and not forced. The talmidim (disciples) just can't get enough of one another! They can't keep away! And what fills them is infectious! There is chayim or spiritual and life, present and comingled with their natural life. And there were wonderful consequences for the fellowship of that era. And now something very, very, very important. Please pay close attention: where most English versions render the text, "the Master added to the messianic community (church) daily those who were being saved", the Aramaic - the language these talmidim (disciples) spoke, lived, and breathed - is even more specific and says that the community was being "given chayim (life)".

This is what I want you to realise above all else. What we in evangelical circles today call "being saved" wasn't just devotion to, or acceptance of, some abstract theological idea to these early talmidim (disciples), nor was it a 'ONE OFF' affair: 'being saved' was a daily renewal of something very real, very tangible, very 'touchable', and very special indeed - it actually resulted in reception and continual cultivation by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) of "chayim (life)" - 'New Life', 'New Creation', the Davar, Logos or Word which is the divine operational power of Yahweh. It was never a question of 'once delivered, always delivered', or 'once received, always present' if one chose to turn away from Messiah and embrace sin and the old life again. We see what it means to always be "being saved" by observing the kind of life what was spontaneously and joyously lived. The picture is one of energetic spiritual and physical motion - of divine activity leading to a recognisable 'dance' in the form of a Torah-based lifestyle very different from those not possessing the New Life. The two are radically diffrerent; when the boundaries between the two shift away from each other, then the balance of the New Creation life and the Old Creation life shifts in the direction of the old...and toward death. As the two intersecting planes part more and more, as evidenced by the quality and quantity of life lived, so, finally, when the parting is complete - when there is no longer any intersection, and all that remains is the Old Creation Life once again, so salvation may be said to have been lost. The handle to the heavenly realm has gone and all that remains is the ever quickening spiral into darkness.

All of this, in each and every life, is part of the Greater Story. The Story continues to be told, the Story that began in Genesis 1:1, by being lived out by the first humans. We in our turn live in the Story and are connected to the qodeshim (saints, set-apart-ones) of all generations, both those alive on earth, and those alive in Heaven as disembodied spirits, and eventually we shall be connected to all those who are resurrected. For this supernatural chayim (life) is Resurrection Life. This is what the New Creation intersecting with the Old Creation looks like. This is Elohim (God) in action, imparting New Life every day. For each day our Father in Heaven gives us a "renewing of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), whom He poured out on us abundantly through Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) our Deliverer (Saviour)" (Titus 3:5-6, NKJV), He who gives us our daily chayim (life).

Next week we shall continue with this theme and examine more closely what all the "eating" Luke spoke about in Acts has to do with this renewal of chayim (life) and the phronema that connects us to the life of the Messianic Community (Church). In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you in a couple of days' time at Rosh Chodesh for whatever prophetic davar (word) Elohim (God) may have for us. Go in shalom (peace) and chayim (life)! Amen.

Endnotes

[1] From a lecture given to Calvin College, How God Became King: Why We've All Misunderstood the Gospels (2012)
[2] Notoriously difficult to translate. In the Aramaic, "Lord Elohim and Master" (AENT), "Master YHWH and our Master Yah'shua the Messiah", (ISRV). Also "Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord" (NEB) with an alternative rendering, "our one and only Master, and Jesus Christ our Lord" (NEB, alt.), "Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" (NABRE), "our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ" (NRSV), with an alternative rendering, "the only Master and our Lord Jesus Christ" (NRSV, alt.). It is not clear whether Yahweh the Father and Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) are being addressed as separate Personages, whether all the titles apply to Yah'shua (Jesus) alone, or whether YHWH (Yahweh) and Yah'shua (Jesus) are being equated. This author takes the view that Yah'shua (Jesus) is being referenced as the 'Lesser Yahweh' and as Elohim (God), a proof of His Deity.
[3] St.Augustine Volumes in the Early Church Fathers (Christian Classics Ethereal Library, - Calvin College)

Comments from Readers

[1] "Wow I love this!! Excellent teaching!" (LM, USA, 2 June 2019)
[2] "Good morning. Excellent teaching" (BY, Germany, 2 June 2019)