Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah, may the grace of Yah'shua (Jesus) be with you as we resume our series of studies on spiritual equipping.

At the end of the last sabbath I left you three texts of scripture to immerse yourself in and to do some research on by comparing other translations: Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11,28 and Ephesians 4:11-13. I hope you found that rewarding. And if anyone dug in to the Greek you might have discovered that each of these blocks of Scripture is talking about different types or categories of 'gifts'. Romans 12 is talking about charismata which does mean what you probably think it means but simple means 'graces' or 'favours'; 1 Corinthians 12 is talking about pneumatikoi, literally, 'spiritual things', spiritualities' or as one commentator calls them, 'pneumatic resources'; and Ephesians 4 is talking about domata or 'grantings' - things granted - more precisely, 'transfers of property'.

Thus these are what the three categories consist of:

• 1. Graces/Favours (charismata): prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and showing mercy (Rom.12:6-8);
• 2. Spiritual Things (pneumatikoi): words of wisdom, words of knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, languages (tongues), interpreting varieties of languages (tongues), viâ (in order of importance), apostles, prophets and teachers (1 Cor.12:4-44,28); and
• 3. Grantings/Transfers of Property (domata) viâ apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, for the work of the ministry and edification for the express purpose of bringing everyone to One and the Same Faith, and to perfect Knowledge about Christ and Fullness in Christ (Eph.4:11-13).

One of the important lessons we learn from the second category - 'spiritual things' - is two-fold that tells us something both about Yahweh and human beings:

• 1. He doesn't (in most cases) give regenerated believers the same gift (like languages or 'tongues'); and
• 2. He doesn't give any one individual all of the gifts though He may give those with offices carrying a heavily responsibility several of them at the same time. Thus apostles must also be prophets, evangelists and teachers.

Pentecostals and charismatics deliberately ignore this because they build their identity upon everyone having one of the gifts, namely, 'tongues' as evidence (supposedly) of 'spirit baptism'. Paul's words prove them false in this assertion or claim. Let's take a look at 1 Corinthians 12 again, beginning at verse 29, but this time I am going to read from another version (read half-a-dozen or more translations if you can, and if you know some Greek or Aramaic, check that out too, to get a real sense of what Paul is insisting on. Reading from the Contemporary English Version:

"Not every one is an apostle. Not everyone is a prophet. Not everyone is a teacher. Not everyone can work miracles. Not everyone can heal the sick. Not everyone can speak different kinds of languages ('tongues'). Not everyone can tell what these languages mean (interpret). I want you to desire the best gifts (the greatest charismata). So I will show you a much better way" (1 Cor.12:29-31, CEV).

And can anyone tell me what Paul says is the greatest of the charismata? The whole of Chapter 13 about it. Yes, agapé love, or ahavah/chesed in Hebrew, what the KJV calls 'charity' (make a mental note of the first part of that word, the charis part). If you have been trained to think like a Pentecostal or a Charismatic, not only might you be surprised to learn from the Davar Elohim (Word of God) that:

• 1. Not all believers are supposed to speak in 'tongues';
• 2. Not only will you be surprised to learn that 'tongues' is, in actual fact, the dictionary definition of a 'language' (with vocabulary, syntax, etc.), namely, 'a system for the expression of thoughts, feelings, etc., by the use of spoken sounds or conventional symbols, which is a distinguishing characteristic of man as compared with other animals' [1] (in other words, it's not gibberish); but rather that (as Chapter 13 underlines again and again),
• 3. The only language that all regenerated believers share, and which distinguishes them from unbelievers and nominal believers, is the language of love...but not any old kind of love.

You see, this spiritual charisma or 'gift' is a not a sentimental thing at all. It is what one minister calls 'a many-splendoured thing' - it is a special kind of love in action, the kind of love that lays down its life for a brother or a sister (Jn.15:13; 1 Jn.3:16), even a stranger, and sometimes even an enemy! You might even call it 'tough love', not the brutal variety one sometimes hears about, but 'tough' in the sense that is it vitually impossible to exercise without supernatural aid, because it does not come from the 'natural', 'fallen' or 'Adamic' man, which is selfish by definition. We see a perfect example of this exhibited by the Saviour Himself as He looked upon those who He knew many of whom would one day assent to His murder:

"Then Yah'shua (Jesus) went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues (kehillot), preaching the Besorah (Gospel, Good News) of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd" (Matt.9:35-36, NKJV).

That word for 'compassion' translates a long Greek work, splagchnizomai ('splach-nee-zoamai'), which literally means, 'to displace your internal organs' or 'to have the bowels yearn', that is to say, feel extreme visceral sympathy or pity. It's a word used a lot in the Gospel of Matthew (e.g. 14:14; 15:32), which was written to Hebrews, and appears throughout the Tanakh (Old Testament) as the Hebrew words chanan, 'avvah (eagerly desire) or rucham (pity) [2] and indeed right throughout the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) where we are admonished to show compassion to those in need (e.g. Col.3:12; Heb.10:34; Jas.5:11).

As authentic silverware has its hallmark or certification of authenticity, so an authentic believer has this overflowing agapé-type splagchnizomai or compassion. We all know what a compassionate person looks like. When you get a local congregation or assembly full of compassionate believers, you will know that ahavah, chesed, agapé love is present, that the people are full of grace - undeserved loving kindness - and are together a corporate spiritual love dynamo - they have that 'dynamic' we spoke of last week. They're on the move, they're real, they're alive in Messiah.

However, such fire has to be channelled and shaped in the Torah way so that it is ever building according to divine Torah tavnith (pattern). Together these constitute what Yah'shua (Jesus) called "the Gospel of the Kingdom" or Besorah haMalkut (Mt.4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mk.1:15). That is why congregations need people with multiple charismata, such as we have seen in the three lists or blocks of Scripture I introduced last week. Recall what I said earlier that the KJV, which was written in 17th century Jacobean English, used the word 'charity' for ahavah/chesed/agapé love which is the chief of the charismata which means 'gifts'. Also recall that in that first list of 'Graces/Favours' that that one of the items was showing mercy - chesed, or undeserved loving-kindness. Do you see how the attributes all converge - charity, love, grace, charismata (gifts)? Are we biblically 'charismatic'? We'd better be! But not like the Protestant movement of the same name, not by a long shot! Anyone who wants to duplicate that here is in the wrong place.

We need the fiery charisma or heavenly gift of love and compassion, which is the first of the gifts or charismata shared by all truly regenerated believers. But it doesn't - and can't - end there, even if it absolutely must begin there. Love is the defining feature of the Gospel! We also - critically, though this is much neglected in Evangelical churches - need the Torah-teachers to mentally shape the coporate vessel of the people to contain and dispense that love. It is the Torah-lifestyle lived out by the believers that best 'fits' this Divine Love, because a quality of Ahavah-Love is obedience to the mitzvot (commandments) (Jn.14:15). Indeed we need all the rest too - the healers, the miracle-workers, the gifted in multiple languages and those gifted in translation, the mercy-givers, and so on.

It's one package so there can't be any denominations emphasising one thing over the other. We can't choose to be Evangelical or Messianic - we have to be Messianic-Evangelical! We can't be 'Baptist', 'Charismatic', 'Pentecostal', 'Methodist', 'Presbyterian', Episcopalian', 'Seventh Day Adventist' or whatever, because the Messianic-Evangelicals have to baptise by full immersion upon confession of faith like the Baptists, they have be endowed with the true charisamata or giftings, they have to be 'pentecostal' but also 'passover-al' and 'sukkot-al' too, they have to be methodical Arminians like the Methodists, they have to have Elders or Zaqqenim like the Presbyterians, have Bishops like the Episcopanians and Anglicans, observe the Sabbath like the Adventists and Messianics (though not the false Saturday one), and so on. Yes, we even have to be Catholic or Universal, but not Roman Catholic, and Orthodox but not Eastern Orthodox. Plus we need authentic shlichim or apostles (but not like the Mormons, Pentecostals or New Apostolics). You can't break-up and spread the charismata, pneumatikoi and domata around - the graces, spiritual things and grantings, because once you do you end up with something else.

Coming to that "unity of the faith" that Paul spoke of in Ephesians 4:13 requires all the giftings to be in place in a body of diverse, spiritually-regenerated believers in each congregation. And it's not just the doctrinal unity aspired to by Scripturally-minded cessationists or the showy gifts aspired to by continuationist 'charismatics' that matter, because when these are separated, the doctrine goes off course (at one extreme like the Calvinists) and the charismata get easily counterfeited (at the other extreme in the 'Charismatic Movement'). We have to build a conceptual and actual bridge between the two divisions in Evangelical Christianity, shear off and discard all the fossilised excrement Satan has attached to them, pass them through the mould of New Covenant Torah, and then lift the whole into the higher light of the Sukkot (Tabernacles) anointing as it is dispensed to us, leaving all the old denominational traditions entirely behind.

Now I realise I have greatly over-simplified things here, and I apologise for that, but sometimes one needs to cut corners in order to present the 'big picture' which is one of most important my callings. If I were to load you with details, the bigger plot would be missed. My purpose has been to give you an overall vision of what it means to be 'Messianic Evangelical' and what it means especially to be Torah-observant Evangelical. That requires words and pictures - sometimes lots of them - because the Gospel of the Kingdom is both noetic (of the mind only) and experiential or existential (of the heart).

Mind and heart have to walk hand-in-hand because together they are in any case what the Hebrew lev or 'heart' actually is. Divide them and you end up either with intellectual fossils or emotional chaos. Mind you, this doesn't mean, for example, you can just fuse Baptists and Pentecostals into 'Bapticostals' or Messianics and Evangelicals into 'Messicals' - what a mess that would be! Yahweh has to build the end-time Remnant afresh, supernaturally, and an entirely 'new creation'. My job is to paint you the picture of what it's going to somewhat look like when it happens.

Our Western culture has dramatically swung away from the noetic to the existential - people think less and less and rely on their feelings more and more to chart their lives, spiritual or otherwise. This is just another example of the division sown by the Enemy. Men were designed, on balance, to be more noetic, and women more existential, but everything has now been reversed and jumbled up. And as I said, in the dying post-modernist culture which is going completely mad, we have discarded reason for gut feelings and are shocked to find they aren't much of a barometer of emet (truth). You see this in Protestantism too - the cessationists are more noetic (brain-centred) and the charismatics more existential (heart-based).

The essential message I want to distill out of today's study is this. Though in our nickname we put 'messianic' before 'evangelical', in reality the 'evangelical' part has to come first, because of the first and most important charisma that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13 - the charisma of Divine Love. Yes, heart and mind are both impacted together upon spiritual rebirth but the two have to be educated somewhat differently, something Christians and Messianics are still grappling with, and not only Christians and Messianics, but indeed Western education as a whole. We must bring order, and in the divine hierarchy of things, love is the primary moving principle. One of the shortest verses in the Bible, "Elohim (God) is ahavah (love)" (1 Jn.4:8.16) makes that abundantly clear, but Divine Love is not, as I said, mere sentiment or emotion. It's much, much bigger. And it's beautifully ordered. It's orderly. Remember what Paul said, in trying to tidy up the immature, chaotic, disorderly charismatic mess in Corinth, "Let all things be done decently and in order" (1 Cor.14:40, NKJV), because the New Covenant Melchizedek Priesthood is an ORDER, not a haphazzard affair (Heb.5:6,10,20; 7:11,21). The royal 'priesthood of all believers' 81 Pet.2:9) isn't everyone haphazzardly doing her or her own thing. It has structure, like Creation itself. It has Ordnung.

Next week we are going to deal with an equally important and misunderatood subject which I think will surprise both the cessationists and the continuationists - both what I call the 'Biblicists' and the 'Charismatics'....and both the Evangelicals and the Messianics. We're going to talk about the Baptism of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and Fire but in a way you have perhaps never heard before, even if the ancients knew all about it. So put aside your denominational models and get ready for something new...and yet old. We need this teaching more than at any other time since New Testament times and appropriately we will be talking about it on the very Eve of potential anarchy in the USA and the world.

Until then, Yahweh bless and protect you all, and may the Master's favour be with you in abundance. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Eds. William T. McLeod & Patriack Hanks, The New Collins Concise English Dictionary (Guild Publishing, London: 1987), p.631
[2] Eg. Deuteronomy 30:3; 1 Samuel 23:21; Psalm 103;13; Isaiah 49:15; 54:8; Lamentations 4:10

Acknowledgements