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(Matthew 18:19,20)
Section 1 - Lesson 9
A Hebraic Perspective
Life As A Pilgrimage
The Answered Prayer Of The Righteous
The Home, The Basic Spiritual Building
Block
Fellowship Of Extended Spiritual Family
A Hebraic Perspective:
Life as a Pilgrimage
“Blessed are those whose strength is
in you, who have set their hearts
on pilgrimage” (Psalm 84:5).
Pilgrimage is
a concept that you probably haven’t heard before in
contemporary Christian circles. However, you are a pilgrim, a
traveler on a spiritual journey toward a destination or
culmination.
The Hebraic view of life was understood in
terms of a life journey, a pilgrimage centered around God. Life
wasn’t a here and now, live for today phenomenon. Rather,
your existence was a passage with a divine plan and a Guide Who will
bring fulfillment according to His will and purpose.
Life as an ongoing
journey is the underlying theme of
both Testaments. This reality of progressing
onward strongly supports the
concept of exploring the Bible from beginning to end if you are
to fully grasp the significance of redemption.
Isn’t pilgrimage the basis of
Paul’s letters — to keep pressing on? He exhorts
the followers of Jesus in Philippi to be fully confident that “the One who began a good work among you
will keep it growing until it is
completed on the Day of the Messiah
Jesus” (Philippians 1:6,CJB).
The entire history of the Hebrew people
encompasses their journey with God. As their Husband, their
Defender, their Lord, He repeatedly delivers His people when
they cry out in repentance for His intervention in their time
of need.
The Bible chronicles again and again the
satanic deception, domination, and attempted destruction of
God’s people — the same game plan of the enemy
that’s revealed in the Newer Testament (see John 10:10).
And God was just as faithful to rescue whenever they turned to
Him for help.
Evangelist Ed Silvoso speculated that the
book of Exodus might have ended with the second chapter if the
people of Israel had not finally recognized that calling out to
God was their only hope for deliverance! It took thirty-eight
more chapters in the book to show how God delivered.
Viewed from God’s perspective, the
Bible is an ongoing story of divine deliverance in response to the
prayers and cries of His beloved. Even the Gospel embraced by
the earliest Church was seen in the context of pilgrimage. At
conversion a person accepted the conditions of the Covenant
offered by the Father, which were made possible by the shed
blood of Jesus. But, salvation itself was experienced at the
end of life’s journey, at the Judgment Throne.
The repetition of trials and deliverance
in your life is part of your own pilgrimage. The pattern culminates in final deliverance
when you stand before the King of kings and your name is
announced to the hosts of heaven. The reality of His faithfulness should strengthen and comfort you in any of your trials!
Examine your own life’s pilgrimage:
Recount a few of the times when circumstances in your life
seemed too desperate to be resolved. Were you quick to cry out
to God? How did He respond? Were you surprised by the answer He
provided?
A Hebraic Perspective:
The Answered Prayer Of The Righteous
“Answer me when I call to you, O my
righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to
me and hear my prayer” (Psalms
4:1)
Some of the best examples of Hebraic
prayer are found in the Psalms. David describes himself as “a man of prayer” (Psalms 109:4). A common thread is woven throughout
the psalms: Prayer is communication with God. He Himself is
the “one needful thing.” Embedded within prayer is
worship, praise, intercession—letting God hear your
heart. Prayer fully realizes that Someone is really listening.
Your prayer is communion with a holy God.
His holiness calls for your humility in
your prayer life:
• Mindfulness that He works through others on
your behalf.
• Meekness when you realize that only
by His grace and His approaching you can you even experience a love
relationship with Him.
The condition of your heart is crucial as you
seek to commune with God. HE already is aware of it; are you? This was the
point behind Jesus’s comparison of the self-righteous
Pharisee and the humility-garmented Publican.
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:
“Two men went up to the temple to
pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The
Pharisee stood up and prayed about
himself: ‘God, I thank you
that I am
not like other men—robbers, evildoers,
adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week
and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a
distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and
said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I
tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will
be exalted” (Luke 18:
9-14).
Prayer from a Hebraic view is not so much
a matter of what you say. Instead, prayer represents your
heart’s longing for your Lord, even when words
can’t express what is in your heart. This is perhaps what
Paul was referring to in Romans 8:26: “We do not know what we ought to pray, but the
Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot
express.”
You may have observed in the Book of Acts
that it was answered prayer that got the earliest followers of Jesus
noticed. They understood God’s requirement for responding
to their prayers: “The LORD
is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous” (Proverbs 15:29).
Peter affirms the need to walk in
righteousness if you want God to hear your prayer: “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and
his ears are attentive to their
prayer, but the face of the Lord is
against those who do evil” (1
Peter 3:12).
James as well reiterates that the prayers
of a righteous person are effective. He even reminds us of the
prophet Elijah, a “man just
like us”, whose prayer
to withhold rain for three and half years was answered (James 5:
16-18).
John, the apostle whom Jesus especially
loved, built off Psalm 32 and David’s link of confession
and God’s responsiveness. We’re told clearly what
we need to do to walk uprightly: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John
1:9).
Answered prayer is really our
Father’s affirmation that you are living repentantly before
Him, and that He has indeed made you righteous. Your prayer
life is one of the best indicators of your trust in Him—all the more when He knows that delayed answer is best for
you.
Another way to weigh the effectiveness of
your prayer:
• If our Father is answering your
prayers, He’s responding to your righteousness, both that
which you receive in Jesus and the righteousness brought about
by your confession.
• If your prayers are consistently
unanswered, He is revealing that you’re holding on to
unconfessed sin.
How would you describe your prayer life in
terms of depth of communion with God?
What recent answered prayer comes to mind?
How often do you share testimony to God’s faithfulness
when He answers?
A Hebraic Perspective:
The Home, the Basic Spiritual
Building Block
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God,
the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength.
These commandments that I give you today
are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk
about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the
road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind
them on your foreheads.
Write them on the doorframes of your
houses and on your gates”
(Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
The Hebraic home was a little sanctuary
set aside for the worship of God, the study of His Word, and
the offering of hospitality. Realize that the soundness of the
entire Hebraic society depended on training up the next
generation to know and apply God’s Word to their lives.
The home and the extended spiritual family
of their fellowship in homes provided secure boundaries of
truth for children as they developed their own response to the
uniqueness of being chosen to be God’s people.
A man, as head of his own household, was
the highest authority in his home. All other social entities
supported his authority in his family and his responsibility
for their spiritual development. He needed to be well-grounded
in God’s Word and His ways so that if his wife had
questions about spiritual matters, she knew she could find
answers by asking him during the course of their life at home
(see 1 Corinthians 14:35). Questions for which he had no answer
he could bring to the rabbi or elders for their input.
Children expected their father to pass
spiritual truth on to them. The Gentile followers of Jesus in
Ephesus may not have had much of a background in the Hebrew
Scriptures, but Paul still made clear that these men were
responsible to investigate and apply God’s Word in their
homes: “Fathers, do not
exasperate your children; instead, bring
them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians
6:4).
[For more on this, see our Hebraic
Article, Hebraic Home Fellowships Must Produce Godly Generations].
The “outsourcing” of wives and
children for others to spiritually train in applying
God’s Word to life would have been unheard of among our
Hebraic ancestors in the faith. In fact, the current
outsourcing of children for others to guide (Sunday schools,
youth groups) harkens back to England in the 1700’s.
Well-meaning people tried to help illiterate orphans who had
been forced by circumstances to work in factories. What has now
become the established practice of “Sunday school”
was the only opportunity impoverished children had to learn to
read.
In almost any congregation today, people question you when you or your family don’t attend Sunday school. But programmed curricula offered in classroom format has undermined fathers in their responsibility to God and their family. Lax dads are excused, and their kids turn elsewhere for guidance. Describe how your home is used for the
spiritual development of your family. What is lacking? Who if
anyone leads spiritual discussion and training in your home?
Do you rely on religious leaders and
programs to compensate for what you aren’t doing yourself? Or,
do you look to them to supplement the truths you’re already studying
and applying?
A Hebraic Perspective:
Fellowship of Extended
Spiritual Family
“Every day they continued to meet
together in the temple courts. Synagogues were not always part of the
Hebraic scene. During the time of Elisha, it was common for a
prophet to open his home as a meeting place for study and
prayer. Ezekiel also mentions this: “In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the
fifth day, while I was sitting in
my house and the elders of Judah
were sitting before me, the hand of the Sovereign Lord came upon me
there” (Ezekiel 8:1). As
these gatherings became more regular and more organized, they
developed into the pattern of weekly Sabbath meetings after
which the weekly gatherings of followers of Jesus were modeled.
Understanding the application of God’s
Law was primary to our Hebraic ancestors in the faith. As His chosen people they had often
experienced the rod of discipline as well as His abundance of
grace. Holy obedience to His ways was key to enjoying the
latter, so earnestly seeking that which pleased God was great
motivation to gather together to learn from His Word:
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and
then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers
had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone
but on every word that comes from
the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3).
Each gathering of Jews within a
neighborhood or a town was an autonomous entity—there was
no ”denominational” authority or organization to
whom they were responsible. Rather, every Jew was
interconnected with others in the broader sense of
“spiritual family”.
Any gathering of at least ten righteous men formed
a minyan, the minimum number for a public prayer or worship
gathering. The requirement for ten men came from
Abraham’s attempt to save Sodom from God’s wrath
(see Genesis 18:16-33). The patriarch pleaded for God to spare
the city if ten righteous men could be found in its midst. God
assured Abraham, “For the
sake of ten, I will not destroy it” (v. 32). Tragically, ten could not be found.
Hebraic faith practice of Bible times
wasn’t enacted in today’s manner with paid
professionals hired from outside the community to perform
religious duties and services. The rabbi was what we today
would call a “lay person”, having no more special
duties or offices during corporate gatherings than anyone else.
There was no hierarchical structure to
which he had to report. A rabbi held no priestly office nor was
he a synagogue functionary. Rather, he was a man consumed with love for God and His Word, recognized within his community as one who
could discern both the meaning and the application of the
Hebrew scripture.
A rabbi worked at an occupation to provide
for the needs of his family and devoted time to scriptural
study after that. In fact, he was considered a fellow learner along
with his disciples, for a person never “graduated”
from studying and applying God’s Word.
As a member of the local community, a
rabbi, in conjunction with the elders, was motivated by his
love for God and for his fellow man to help them establish halakhahs (biblical
applications).
A rabbi’s capacity to identify with
the frailty of man and also represent a responsive action of
obedient trust was in direct contrast to the rigid restrictions
of the Pharisees, who, Jesus noted, “tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s
shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger
to move them” (Matthew 23:4).
Men who were recognized as full of wisdom
were revered as zakenim (zaken singular), that is, elders or sages. God’s
representatives in guiding His children, these elders set a
visible standard of the holiness called for by God. They
dispensed just and merciful decisions on behalf of the entire
community. As you’ll see in a later lesson, reliance on
older, wiser men as shepherds was incorporated into early
Christian faith communities. These older men were the
Father’s choice to shepherd His children.
When the people of the community gathered
corporately, any member of the congregation who was able to
instruct could be called up to read from God’s Word, lead
congregational prayers or preach. Paul gives us a glimpse of
this mutual participation when he writes,
Whenever you come together, let everyone be ready with a psalm or a teaching or a revelation, or ready to use his
gift of tongues or give an interpretation; but let everything
be for edification (1
Corinthians 14:26).
Jesus showed Himself prepared at the
synagogue in Nazareth when He was invited to read from the
Bible and teach (see Luke 4:16).
When the Jewish people came together for
prayer and public reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, the text
was translated into the everyday language of the people,
especially if they lived outside Israel. The passage was presented
in a halakhic manner—a meaningful lesson that could apply to
daily life. This pattern formed the basis of what would later
be considered preaching in Christian gatherings—teaching
with the goal of application.
While we were living in Israel we noticed
an interesting phenomenon in our settlement community. One of
the many neighborhood “synagogues” was two doors
away. On the Sabbath, a particular family pulled their car out
of their garage and set up chairs. People from the neighborhood
came together to participate in worship and fellowship. It was
wonderful to see their relational intimacy with one another.
This had come about through frequent contact during the week
because they lived close to each other.
Do you fellowship as Paul describes in 1
Corinthians 14:26? Yes or No.
Does the teaching you receive bring practical application for your life? Yes or No. Is sin confronted forthrightly and pointedly so that hearers are brought to self-examination and repentance? Yes or No. What would you like to see happening in
your fellowship gathering?
If your answer was “No” to any
of the questions above, what is your motive for staying within
that faith community?
Do you think your response holds merit
with God?
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