One of the biggest obstacles that keeps Jewish people away from Yeshua is the concern that if they believe in Him, they will no longer be Jewish. Is that true? Paul says it should not be true. A Jew is a Jew and should always remain a Jew. And a non-Jew is a non-Jew and should remain a non-Jew.

If you are a Jew and you accept Yeshua as your Savior, you are not suddenly supposed to turn yourself into a Gentile. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:18-20:

¹⁸ Was anyone called while circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. ¹⁹ Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. ²⁰ Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called.”

Now there are some who like to quote Galatians 3:27,28: ²⁷ “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ²⁸ “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” But I ask you, “When we accepted Yeshua into our lives, did men stop being men and women stop being women?” Of course not. And neither do Jews stop being Jews and non-Jews stop being non Jews.

Many, in fact, say that because of belief in Yeshua as the Messiah one’s Jewish identity is not only maintained, but also is usually heightened.

So today there is a movement within the worldwide body of believers called “Messianic Judaism.” It is a movement of Jewish people from all walks of life who believe that Yeshua is the promised Messiah and Savior for Israel and the world. Messianic Jews have not stopped being Jewish. On the contrary, Jewish believers have continued to remain strongly Jewish in identity, lifestyle, and belief that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah and the fulfillment of Biblical Judaism.

Messianic Judaism is the Judaism of the Bible—Biblical Judaism, not Rabbinic Judaism—and is centered around the Messiah and the salvation He brings. Therefore, Messianic Jews believe that it is unnecessary to go through sages or rabbis to know God. They maintain that believers have access to God because of the atoning work of Messiah Yeshua, who makes Jewish people complete and fulfilled.

For most of the first century C.E., faith in Yeshua was predominantly Jewish. As more and more Gentiles came into the Messianic faith, however, some did not understand its Jewish roots and God’s eternal covenant with Israel. A “de-Judaizing” process set in, a separation from the Jewish roots of the faith and from the Jewish people. This separation eventually led to the formation of a second wing of this faith in Yeshua composed of Gentile believers, i.e., “Christianity.”

While Messianic Jews are one in the Spirit with true Gentile believers, they have their own expression of faith in Messiah. Messianic Judaism holds that it is Jewish to believe in Yeshua, and that believers are returning to the Jewish roots of the faith. They observe the Biblical feasts and holidays, while at the same time acknowledging that the only way to be saved and truly born again of God’s Spirit is through faith in the atoning work of Messiah Yeshua.

Sadly, many Christians believe that the Torah is largely irrelevant now that Yeshua has come, and that they should have little, if anything, to do with it. Messianic Jews do recognize and affirm that one can’t be saved through the law, because the only way to be saved through the law is to keep all of the commandments perfectly. This is impossible because of our inherently sinful nature (see Deuteronomy 27:26, Ecclesiastes 7:20).

At the same time, while the law can’t save, it is far from being dead. The moral precepts of the Ten Commandments are carried into the New Covenant Scriptures. The Biblical holidays are particularly edifying, and there are many other areas of the law that are valuable to us today as well. Rabbi Paul makes it very clear that all believers have liberty in Messiah Yeshua (see Galatians 5:1), which means both freedom from the law and freedom to observe the law as believers see fit. Paul did his best to uphold the Torah, as did the other early Messianic Jews, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 21:20; 28:17).

1. When did Messianic Judaism begin?

So we see that Messianic Judaism is actually about 2,000 years old, dating back to the time of Yeshua. Yeshua was Jewish. He was raised in a Jewish home and ministered to Jewish people in a Jewish land, Eretz Yisrael. His disciples were Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. The writers of the New Testament, HaBrit Hahadashah, were Jewish, and, for a time, the faith was strictly Jewish. Some historians believe that in the first century C.E. more than one million Jewish people, both in and outside of Israel, believed that Yeshua was the Messiah (see Acts 2:37-42, 4:4, 21:20).

Messianic Judaism continued into the seventh century C.E., in spite of the fact that many rabbis put pressure upon Jewish believers in Yeshua to give up their faith. At the same time, many Gentile Church leaders insisted that Messianic Jews abandon their Jewishness. And the rise of Islam in the seventh century also brought pressure to bear upon Messianic Jews. Eventually, they lost the battle to maintain their Jewish identity. Consequently, most Messianic Jews assimilated into the Church.

Though Messianic Judaism, as a distinct movement, faded from the scene in the seventh century, there have always been Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua. Beginning in the early 1800s, increasing numbers of Jewish people began to believe in Yeshua. The movement gained momentum after 1967, when God gave Israel an amazing victory in the Six-Day War, and Jerusalem returned to Jewish control for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. Since then, thousands of Jewish people have believed in Yeshua. Today, there are many Messianic congregations in the United States and in Israel, and others in England, Scotland, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada. I believe that the modern Messianic Jewish movement is the result of the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit upon His chosen people (see Deuteronomy 30:1-6; Hosea 3:4,5; Joel 2:28,29).

Messianic Jews have revived the Jewishness of the faith in vital ways:

• They encourage Jewish believers to continue to enjoy their heritage and to enhance the life of the church through elements of Jewish culture such as music, drama, dance, art, literature, and humor.
• They identify with the Jewish community through adaptation of a Jewish lifestyle, e.g., observing religious and national festivals, traditions, and events of life (Jewish-style weddings, funerals, etc.).
• They have Messianic Jewish, congregational-type worship. One such congregation in the United States, for example, has found that two types of worship services are necessary, both for its members as well as for outreach to the community. One is a freer service that a person from a secular Jewish background could understand. The other is structured according to the more traditional Jewish style of worship. The value of such identification can readily be seen. It presents the gospel in a Jewish way. It shows that Jews can believe in Yeshua as the Messiah while also retaining their Jewish heritage and identity. It has been found, however, that a number of criteria need to be applied to these efforts:
  
  
  
  • They must be faithful to Scripture, so that the substance of faith will not be neglected by overemphasis on the forms in which the faith is expressed.
  
  
  • Such worship and retention of Jewish customs must be an authentic expression of the life of members of the group.
  
  
  • These expressions must be undertaken with care regarding relationships with the wider Christian community.
  
  

2. What is the relationship between Jewish and Gentile believers?

In the days of the second temple, a “middle wall of partition” existed that physically separated Jews and Gentiles. Gentiles could not pass beyond that point, and were relegated to what was called the “court of the Gentiles.” According to the New Covenant Scriptures, this “middle wall of partition” has been broken down (Ephesians 2:14).

Rabbi Paul explains in Romans 11:24 that Gentile believers have actually entered a Jewish faith: “For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?” Gentile believers have become spiritually circumcised and part of the commonwealth of Israel. They are one with Jewish believers because the Spirit of God dwelling within a Jewish believer is the same Spirit dwelling within a Gentile believer. Our ethnicity, heritage, and background may be different, but God has made us one in the Spirit (see John 10:16).

3. Jews have a distinct call to be a light to the Gentiles.

All that said, we must keep in mind that the Jews were formed by God through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be a special blessing to this world. God has a purpose and a calling for the nation of Israel. He has used the Jewish people to give the Gentiles the way of salvation, and one of the Jewish people’s covenant responsibilities toward God involves their being a light to the world (see Isaiah 49:6).

This covenant relationship is eternal (see Genesis 17:1-8, Jeremiah 31), and since God has made an eternal covenant with the Jewish people, then it is incumbent upon them to keep their covenant relationship with Him. So how can they do so if they assimilate? Thus, if Jewish believers assimilate completely, then how can the Jewish people be a special blessing to the world as promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

So it is God’s desire for Jewish people not to assimilate but to continue to be Jewish. This desire, and their eternal relationship with God, is evidenced by the preservation of the Jewish people for the past 2,000 years, and the fact that God has brought about the restoration of the State of Israel. Jewish believers can continue to worship the God of Israel in a Jewish way, celebrate the Jewish festivals, raise their children as Jews, and be a testimony to their people.

Rather than assimilating, I believe it is important that intermarried couples live a Jewish lifestyle, and raise their children as Jews in much the same way that Ruth the Moabitess made her choice to become part of the Jewish nation (see Ruth 1:16,17). Remember that Rabbi Paul had Timothy circumcised, even though his mother was Jewish but his father was not (see Acts 16:1-3). In this regard, let’s take a moment to consider the matter of who is a Jew.

The Scriptural definition of a Jew is someone who is a physical descendant of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, which is carried primarily through the father. For example, Moses had a Gentile wife and King David’s great-grandmother was Ruth, the Moabitess, yet their children were all considered Jewish. In Acts 16 it is recorded that Paul had Timothy, who was the son of a Messianic Jewish mother and a Gentile father, circumcised. Paul considered Timothy to be a Jew. Therefore, the Scriptures indicate that if either parent is Jewish, one can identify as a Jew, and claim a place among the chosen people.

4. Maintaining Jewish identity is important for reaching other Jews with the gospel.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the stumbling blocks hindering Jewish people from receiving Yeshua as their Messiah is the concern that they will no longer be Jewish. We need to remove this major stumbling block if we want to see more Jewish people come to faith.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:20-22:

²⁰ And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; ²¹ to those who are without law, as without law…that I might win those who are without law; ²²to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak….

Paul tells us how to bridge the culture barrier. He offers two principles of effective cross-cultural communication: identification and relevance.

First, let’s look at the principle of identification. Paul says that in order to communicate the good news effectively we must identify with the people we are called to serve. In the passage we just read Paul gives us examples of several types of people with whom he communicated the gospel. And in each case we see how he followed this principle of identification. In verse 20 Paul claims that to reach Jews he “became as a Jew.” Paul is saying he identified with the Jewish people. Well, you might say: “Now that’s not hard. Paul was Jewish himself.” But let me tell you that I’ve met a number of Jews who, strangely enough, as soon as they got saved, decided to forsake their Jewish identity altogether—and to celebrate their new birth, the first thing they did was go out and order a ham sandwich.

For over 1,000 years, whenever a Jew came to faith in Yeshua, he simply assimilated into the Gentile Church. That’s what was expected—no questions asked. And even today, many people in the Church think that’s still the way it should be. They point to a verse I cited earlier, Galatians 3:28, which says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It’s true that in Christ no one can claim to have a superior status to any other person or race. We all came to Christ in the same way; equally, we were once all sinners before God, and equally, we all needed God’s grace to be saved—and equally, we still need His grace now to continue saving us. But the verse above says nothing about throwing away one’s racial or gender identity.

When Paul accepted Yeshua as his Messiah, he chose still to identify with his own Jewish people—and especially when it came to sharing his faith with them.

In 1 Corinthians 9:20 Paul said, “And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law.” So here we have an example of how Paul, though he was free (see verse19), was willing to do certain things to identify with religious Jews for the sake of reaching them.

Let’s go back to Acts 16, as cited earlier. When Paul wanted to reach the Jewish people in Derbe and Lystra, he “took [Timothy] and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek” (verse 3). Now Paul didn’t have to circumcise Timothy. Back in those days, as we have already seen, a person was considered Jewish if his father was Jewish, not his mother. And Timothy’s father was a Greek, not a Jew. But Paul circumcised him anyway. Why? For the same reason he gives in 1 Corinthians 9:19, “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more.”

What is a servant? A servant is someone who takes his cues from the master of the house. He comes into another person’s house to serve needs and to submit to the rules, codes, and conduct of that house. The servant is like any guest. He doesn’t impose his own ways of doing things on the people he has come to serve. So the principle is this: When you go and reach out to people in their land, in their culture, in their community, you honor their rules and way of life. You don’t try to change the way they act or dress or try to change their customs. When you come to serve them in their city, you “do as the Romans do.” That is to say, you fit into their culture, you identify with their way of life as much as you can—always being careful, however, never to participate in anything opposed to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit’s direction.

I have a friend who feels that he is called primarily to the “religious” in Israel. So even in the way he dresses, he identifies himself with them. On hot summer days he wears a dark suit and a tie. Now for some of you, changing the way you dress might be a real sacrifice. Some people are so insensitive that if they went to Mea Shearim (an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem), they’d be handing out tracts in cutoff shorts.

There are some believers who keep kosher kitchens and make sure their plates and cutlery are even rabbinically kosher—not because they think it’s wrong to mix meat and dairy products according to the Bible, but because they want to be able to invite to dinner neighbors who would come only under those conditions.

Well, Paul was a Jew before he was born again, and he remained a Jew after he was born again. And so, whenever he reached out to his own people, he reached out to them as one Jew to another Jew. He maintained his Jewish identity—and not only that, at times he even went beyond the call of duty and submitted to Jewish religious expectations in order to remove any stumbling block that might prevent his own people from being reached with the gospel.

Now of course, we’re talking about the apostle Paul here. He’s Jewish, so naturally he’s going to be better at reaching the Jewish people than any Gentile would. Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But not necessarily. The fact is, today the majority of Jewish believers have come to faith through the witness of a non-Jewish believer rather than a Jewish believer.

But what was it about the witness of a non-Jew that was so winsome to those Jews who came to faith? From the testimonies I’ve heard from Jews who came to faith through Gentile Christians, it’s the genuine love that they experienced from these Christians. Often, such Christians feel a special calling to the Jewish people. And they so identify themselves with the Jewish people that they are actually very effective in their witness.

You see, when a Jewish person experiences love from a non-Jew, it often awakens real curiosity. Jews have not known much love from Christians over the centuries. Now how is our love tested and proved? When we are willing to spend our lives by serving them, living among them—essentially, identifying with them 100 percent. That’s when our testimony can have a profound impact. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had Israelis ask me why I would ever want to spend the rest of my life in Israel. They say: “Wouldn’t you rather be back home in Canada?” “Isn’t Canada a beautiful country?” “Wouldn’t you make more money in Canada?” “Aren’t people more polite in Canada?”

There was a time when our willingness to identify with the Jewish people was truly tested. Back in 1991, during the Gulf War, we had people back in Canada advising us to leave Israel. But identifying with the people God has called you to serve requires that you stand with them in the good times and the bad. So we didn’t leave. And believe me, this made a world of difference to our Jewish friends. This kind of identification gives authenticity to our faith in Yeshua and authenticity to the profession of our love for the Jewish people.

So I ask you, if you are called to the nation of Israel, what will you do if war breaks out? What will you do if you find that it’s more expensive to live in this country than you thought? What will you do if other pressures make you want to flee this land? Now I’m not going to condemn anyone for leaving Israel, if God tells you to. But you had better make sure GOD told you to, and not your own flesh.

If you’re genuinely called to serve a certain people or nation, then you had better be willing to lay down your life for them.

So far, we’ve only looked at how Paul identified with his own people, the Jews. But in Paul’s case, his calling to preach the gospel went beyond communicating exclusively to those of his own race and culture. He says something in 1 Corinthians 9:21 that would have been astonishing, even offensive at that time to the average religious Jew—or Jewish believer, for that matter. He writes that he became “to those who are without law, as without law.” In other words, Paul is saying, “To Gentiles, I became like a Gentile.” Here, again Paul had some natural advantages. He was bicultural from birth. He was born a Roman citizen, could speak fluently the Greek he learned in the city of Tarsus, and was well acquainted with the Greek culture.

And then Paul gives an example of another group of people he was willing to serve. He not only identified with people of another race and culture, but also with people from another socioeconomic strata of society. In verse 22 he says, “To the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak….” Paul had a heart to reach out to the outcasts of society. To do so, he identified with their condition by living a simple lifestyle.

Now there’s another important means by which we identify with and relate to the people to whom we’re called. And that’s our language. Communication experts agree that a vital key to relating to another culture is understanding their language. I know that after 20 years of living here and studying Hebrew, this is so true.

Someone told me that you can’t really relate to a culture until you understand their comedians. Unfortunately, most humor doesn’t translate from one language to another—so until you learn Hebrew, you’ll never be able to understand their jokes, let along their culture.

I want to show you one example in the book of Acts, when Paul preaches in Jerusalem. Now remember, when he preached to people in Athens, he preached in Greek. And when he related to the Greeks, he found ways to identify with the Greeks—he even quoted the Greek poets.

But in Acts 21 we see that Paul has arrived in Jerusalem. Now many people in Jerusalem understood Greek—it was the lingua franca of the world at that time, the equivalent of English in our day. But I want you to note what it says after Paul’s presence at the temple had caused a disturbance (see verses 27-36) in which a violent mob cried out, “Away with him!” We read in Acts 22:2,3: ² “And when they heard that [Paul] spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent. Then he said: ³ ‘I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today.’ ”

So here in Jerusalem, like any good cross-cultural communicator, Paul didn’t stick with his Athenian method, quoting from Greek poets, but spoke in the frame of reference that Jews understood. First of all, he spoke in their language. And secondly, he emphasized the common ground he shared with them: his Jewish birth, his studies under Gamaliel, his former persecution of Messianic Jewish believers, and then his new-birth experience involving a great light from heaven and a voice speaking to him—things that no Greek could relate to.

This brings us to the second principle of effective cross-communication: relevance. In our failure to understand the values and needs of the people of another culture, we often end up answering questions that aren’t being asked—or trying to meet needs that aren’t needs at all. For instance, in witnessing to someone we may say, “If you become a Christian, you will be happy.” But if that person is already happy, then we aren’t going to be very persuasive. Or if you say to a Jewish person or to a Muslim, “If you believe in Jesus, you’ll have a brand-new family who will love you and care for you.” You may not have offered much that is new and appealing, because chances are very high that such a person already has close family ties and would never break those ties and commit something tantamount to treason.

Someone has said that we who are called to communicate to people of another culture should function like electrical cords that are well plugged in at both the “human end” and the “God end.” Otherwise, there is no way that the “current of God,” the message that we are called to live and deliver, can get to those around us. All too often, those who train people to witness give the impression that if one is careful to plug in solidly at the God end, the other end will take care of itself. They say: “Just preach the gospel.” “God’s Word will never return void.” The problem is, half the time God’s Word comes out sounding like mush, or is misunderstood or not heard at all.

We’ve seen that to communicate the gospel Paul’s way—indeed, God’s way—we must identify with and relate to the people we are trying to reach, and in this way prove the sincerity of the messenger and the authenticity of the message. And we have seen that we must communicate the message in ways that people of another culture can understand and appreciate.

Now you may ask the question, “Isn’t it a little phony to become something you are not?” That is the way some individuals view older people who try to speak and dress like young people. And sometimes this can be phony. However, as Christian anthropologist Charles Kraft has said: “One of the amazing things about human beings is that we can become bicultural. We can, by entering into the lives of other people, become just as real in that context as we are in our normal context. It takes more work, it takes a lot of learning, a lot of modifying. However, we find our efforts paying off to the extent that people remark, ‘You are just like one of us.’ ” By the way, an Israeli said to me not long ago, “Wayne, you’re just like one of us.” The only problem was that he was referring to my driving.

Before you jump to conclusions and accuse Paul of putting on masks, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, did you know that identification was God’s own method of communicating His revelation to mankind? John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God identified with humanity by becoming a man. God in the person of Yeshua became so much a part of a specific cultural context that many in Israel never even recognized that He had come from somewhere else. His enemies accused him of many things, but never of being a foreigner.

The incarnation (God becoming flesh) is the ultimate model of effective cross-cultural communication. We as humans know what God is like and what salvation is all about. How? God Himself identified with us—He became one of us. And by becoming one of us, He was able to show us the truth in living color in the Person of His Son.

Paul says in Philippians 2:5, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Or in another version, we read, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Paul then shows us what attitude Yeshua had. He says two verses later that Yeshua “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”

Just as Yeshua made Himself nothing and became a servant, then when we minister to anyone who is from a culture or a race different from our own, we must be a servant. And as a servant, we must be willing to identify with them and become like them—as long as we don’t compromise our faith.

Yeshua told His disciples in John 20:21, “ ‘…As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ ” If this is how God communicated the gospel to us who were once foreigners to Him, should we then attempt to use some other method to communicate the good news to others who are culturally and linguistically distant from us? We must, like Paul, commit ourselves to “become all things to all men, that [we] might by all means save some.”

John Stott, known worldwide as a preacher, evangelist, and communicator of Scripture, says that in order to be effective in communicating the gospel cross-culturally, we must sit down alongside others, as Philip sat down in the Ethiopian’s chariot (Acts 8:31). Just as God has proved the authenticity of His love for us by “[giving] His only begotten Son” (John 3:16), so we must prove the authenticity of our love and the authenticity of our message of salvation by “going” into the world of others and becoming like them. We need to earn the right to be heard.

How did Yeshua relate so effectively to the people He preached to? First, He lived among them. He met people on the streets, in places of prayer, on hillsides, at their fishing boats, at weddings, at meals. Will we ever effectively reach out to people of another culture if we spend most of our time with people of our own culture? If so, you have to question whether you are being a good steward of God’s time and service.

Being a servant is a lot of work. The first major hurdle that we all face is the language, which takes discipline, patience, and a miracle. But besides learning to understand the language, another hurdle we must overcome in being a servant is understanding the culture. If I want to reach people effectively with the gospel, I must first learn to walk in their shoes, understand the way they think, and find out what their deepest needs and aspirations are. If Yeshua is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), then I must know something about their way (their unique history, traditions, and customs), their truth (their philosophies or religions), and their life (their values, their reason for being).

Thom Hopler,an expert on cross-cultural communication, wrote. “God does not expect us to be instant cross-cultural experts. He does, however, want us to begin changing. So ask yourself, ‘How much of this, Lord, do you want me to apply this month?’ And then begin to do it. Begin to activate the truth God has given you. God is not expecting us to love all the people of the world. But He is expecting us to love those people with whom he has brought us in contact.”

So we here at King of Kings Assembly in Jerusalem are a servant congregation. We don’t serve ourselves. We serve others. Now who is it that we serve? Our mission statement says, “King of Kings Assembly is a congregation of Messianic believers in Jerusalem exalting Yeshua, Israel’s Messiah and Savior.” So whom do we serve? We serve our Messiah and Savior first, of course. But like Paul we also serve people, those specific people God directs us to serve.