Christians and Jews Together
Stuart Dauermann
CHRISTIANS AND JEWS TOGETHER
Messiah and Christians Series 1
Copyright © 2009 MJTI Publications. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Messianic Jewish Theological Institute
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isbn 13: 978-1-60608-403-8
eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7486-9
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Series by the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (MJTI):
Messiah and Jewish Life Series
Messiah and Judaism Series
Messiah and Jewish Vision Series
Messiah and Christians Series
Messiah and Israel Series
If you are an active Christian, you will not want to waste your life serving yesterday’s agenda. While respecting the past, you will want to be relevant in the present out of responsibility for the future. Let me tell you about one such relevant Christian.
Picture Marcia.1 A well-dressed, well-spoken woman in her late-sixties, single, and a member of a well-respected church in Southern California. Marcia is typical of thousands of such women. But in some ways, Marcia is very different. She elected to spend forty years of her life in a South American jungle, developing literacy materials and a Bible translation for a language spoken by only one hundred and sixty people on the face of the earth. Of that tribe, she and her translation partner had contact with only eighty people, most of whom did not understand why Marcia was bothering to do all of this. Meanwhile, back home in her comfortable church, some thought, “What a shame. Couldn’t Marcia have served God back here, gotten married, and lived decently instead of in a hut without plumbing in the middle of some jungle? I suppose what she’s doing is admirable, but to tell the truth, I wonder if she’s wasting her life!”
I knew Marcia. We went to the same school. And she was utterly content with the life she had chosen, because she recognized her jungle existence to be her authentic response to God’s call and the priorities of His Kingdom. She viewed giving this tribe the Scriptures in their own language for current and future generations to be more than worth the sacrifice she was making. But make no mistake about it: there were plenty of people both in the jungle and in her church who just didn’t get it.
Just ask yourself, “Is the kind of Christianity I see around me forcefully advancing, and are the people in my circles doing anything worthy of attack?”
Marcia is typical of many of God’s servants who don’t conform to conventional expectations. These are the kind of people whom the establishment writes off as wasting their lives, or as silly or even dangerous trouble-makers whose get up and go repeatedly gets them into tight places. It is no accident that King Ahab called the Prophet Elijah, “you troubler of Israel,”2 and it wasn’t for past-due parking tickets that Jeremiah ended up in prison, and John the Baptist lost his head. This doesn’t mean, “Whenever you feel a prophetic urge, then, go for it!” After all, there are limits. But political correctness and maintaining high approval ratings aren’t among them. There should be something of Elijah, Jeremiah, John and Marcia in all of us. And don’t forget that irritating fellow Jesus who got himself crucified.
Jesus assessed his contemporaries in words unlikely to be spoken about our generation: “From the time John the Baptist began preaching and baptizing until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people attack it.”3 Just ask yourself, “Is the kind of Christianity I see around me forcefully advancing, and are the people in my circles doing anything worthy of attack?” If the answer is, “Not really,” then read on.4
If we’re going to work to make things better, it helps to understand the relationship between the Age to Come and the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a breakthrough kingdom. We encounter the Kingdom of God whenever the Age to Come (what God will finally do) invades contemporary life, demanding that we realign our today with God’s tomorrow. This in-breaking is always a disruption. Think of Mary, awakened by the angel with the news she was to become the virgin mother of the Son of God. That’s disruption! It was the same for Abraham and Sarah, both of them retirement age, well settled, and living in a sizable city. They sensed the call of God: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”5 God’s word to these seniors was “Get up and go, but I am not saying exactly where to just yet.” This had risk written all over it! Fortunately, they signed on for divine inconvenience, and all of Israel, indeed all nations, are forever in their debt. The message of the Kingdom remains the same now. God is still saying, “Get up and go in the direction of what I’m doing, and I will bless you in the going.”
Ask yourself the question, “Is the Age to Come disruptively breaking through in our day, or has God’s Kingdom run itself down, like some spent wind-up toy?” If you don’t like being bored, and if you want your life with God to count for something, these are important questions.
Give me a moment of your time, and I will show you why some of us believe aspects of the Age to Come are breaking through in our day. Then, like Abraham and Sarah, and like those twelve apostles who turned their world upside down, you will want to get with the program—to get up and go toward God’s tomorrow.
More than two thousand years ago, God instructed the Prophet Habakkuk to use a template suitable to the case I am making: “Write the vision; make it plain . . . so the one may run who reads it.”6 That is the structure I will be following here: First, I will write the vision; second, I will make it plain, situating it within the broader context of historical events and Scripture; and third, I will outline what it means to run with the vision, energized and informed by how God’s Kingdom is breaking through now.
1. This is a pseudonym for the sake of privacy.
2. 1 Kgs 18:17.
