Shalom. Welcome friends to our continuing series, On This Rock.

 

We’re exploring the historical origins and the Hebraic dimensions of the radical church, the root church, the first church.

 

We’ve seen that near the end of his earthly ministry rav Yeshua, rabbi Jesus, calls his apostles aside. He’s at the place where the Jordan River issues forth like springs of life and begins its descent down to the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is going to issue forth here a proclamation: “You’re Peter/Petros, and upon this petra I will build my church.”

 

He gives to Simon, as the key man, along with the other apostles and later, as we see in Acts 15, the whole church, this affirmation to a decision regarding binding and loosing—the keys of the kingdom. It’s an issue of governance. The rabbi is no longer going to be in the midst to interpret the Torah for his disciples, and now his apostles will do that. And indeed the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, the cornerstone being Yeshua.

 

And so we said that the rock, first of all, in classic Hebraic orientation has multiple meanings. It’s the individual. Secondly, it’s an identity. Thirdly, it’s instruction. It’s the individual, Shimon Petros, Shimon bar’Jonah, who’s the key man, a leader, a first among equals. Secondly it’s the identity, the divine identity of Jesus of Nazareth, he’s Mashiach-el, the divine messiah. And thirdly it’s his instruction. For three-and-a-half years he goes about as a teacher, as a rabbi, as a sage, teaching in the classic Jewish manner. And of course all of this we’ve explained in depth in our series, Behold the Man! Jesus goes about teaching continually of the kingdom, but now on the eve of Passover he reveals for the first time that he’s going to be handed over, delivered over unto death and then be raised. And so he’s conferring his divine authority to lead and to make decisions for his community of faith — the church.

 

By the way, this concept of binding and loosing has been understood by some Christians through the centuries, indeed the Roman Catholic Church - the magisterium, the teaching authority within that church - understood that Peter was given this authority. Strangely enough, however, they used that authority to make decisions, such as saying that Sunday now replaces Saturday, the Sabbath, as the Lord’s Day. This is a bit bizarre because from Yeshua’s point-of-view binding and loosing has to do with properly interpreting the Torah as it applies to people’s lives, to conduct, to the way they walk, not to overturning or setting aside the Torah.

 

So Jesus here is conferring authority, but you must understand the background if we are going to get any sense of the Hebraic dimensions to what the church is called. The church is more than just an instrument for preaching the gospel or saving souls. The church is more than just an assembly of like-minded people. The church has a high calling, nothing short of the one God first gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai — to be His people, to fashion for Him a sanctuary in which He could take up His dwelling in the earth.

 

In our last session we saw, that in fact, when we speak of the Passover, of the exodus from Egypt, we can say there are at least five, six, or seven goals (ends) of that exodus.

 

First of all God wants His people to be free. “It is for freedom that you have been set free.” Secondly, He wanted His covenant people set free to come to Himself. “I bore you on eagle’s wings, I’ve brought you to myself in order to serve me.” “Let my people go that they might serve me.” In Hebrew the word avodah, means both service and worship. In fact, we best worship God when we fully serve Him. We attribute the worth-ship due unto Him when we are His servants. So He set them free in order to serve Him, to bring them to Himself and for them now to become a set-apart people, a holy nation, to serve as priests in His kingdom, under His kingship.

 

And so Israel has to receive God as king, which they do at Mt. Sinai, like a bride receiving her bridegroom; they say, “We do.” And then God says, now I want you to build me a sanctuary. Now that we’re joined together let’s construct a house in which we can take up co-habitation. You will be my people, I will be your God. I want to dwell in the midst of you.

 

God is passionate for His people. They’re beloved, deeply beloved. Eternally elected. The calling upon them is irrevocable. And though they may be fickle, God will be faithful. He has betrothed Himself to Israel in covenant faithfulness. “Build me a sanctuary.”

 

And so they build a tent of meeting, literally a tent of witness. And that then, finally, comes to its consummation 480 years later when that temporary tabernacle, that portable sanctuary, becomes a permanent place in the house on the hill. The house of the Lord on the temple mount, Mt. Moriah. “And in that 480th year Solomon began to build.”

 

All of this is the background when Jesus, on the eve of Passover, before going up to that house of the Lord on Mt. Moriah, also called Mount Zion in the First Century, makes this disclosure and draws out of his disciples his identity and gives them his proclamation.

                   

Ours is a high calling. Because of Messiah’s sacrifice as the lamb of God, he is the righteous branch and in him we are now rooted in the olive tree of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are joined to the commonwealth of Israel, the religious heritage and spiritual heritage of the covenant people. God has been in pursuit and is, to this day, in pursuit of a people and a place. And in Messiah we are joined to that people and we are called to be builders.

 

In Hebrew you have a lovely expression, banim bonim, “children are builders.” We have been made the children of God, the Spirit of God’s Son indwells us and indeed prompts us to call out, Abba! Father! But as children we are to be builders.

 

So Jesus says, “I’m going to build.” Even as God said through Jeremiah, “I will build my people.” Now Yeshua carries forth the task. “I will build my church.”

 

Finally, as the context to further explication in this session, it’s in Exodus chapter 12:3, that for the first time we see a very key term, the edat Israel, “the congregation of Israel” is it’s normal translation. The word edah, is used here of Israel for the first time. And this is a critical component of background to the picture that Jesus is constructing for his disciples.

 

First let’s go back to Matthew chapter 16, “I’m going to build my church,” and the word “church” here is ekklesia, from which we get the English word, “ecclesiastical.” The ekklesia of God, the church of God.

 

The first place we look for some of the deeper meanings of this term is to go from the Greek back to the Hebrew, but first let’s look at it in the Greek.

 

It’s a term that’s not at all mysterious. Ekklesia was used of any kind of assembly. It’s an assembly that’s formed in response to a call. Maybe, for example, there’s a call for a political gathering, or for the community to engage in some kind of judgement or adjudication of an issue. Within the Greek context of the polis, the city, an ekklesia was the assembly of all the citizens within that democracy and they would render political and judicial decisions.

 

It comes from the term ek kalao. Ek, “out of,” kalao, “to call.” And so often you hear this, the church is a ‘called out people.’ It’s a rather tepid definition that doesn’t begin to do justice to Yeshua’s concept, but it’s a beginning.

 

Within the Greek context it’s a political concept, primarily, although it can be a military concept. The army can be assembled. But it is simply an assembly of citizens, a citizens’ assembly, that has been called together for some purpose; political, military, judicial, social.

 

Now, it’s the same sense - and again we’re going to find multiple dimensions of meaning - that the church is basically a citizens’ assembly. And it’s why on numerous occasions within the New Testament writings, like Corinthians and Thessalonians and elsewhere, Paul typically writes of the church, and he uses the term ekklesia over 100 times even though it’s used only three times in the gospels. It becomes a key concept after the resurrection and Paul joins the words ‘of God’ to the church; “the church of God.” It’s not just any assembly. It’s an assembly that has gathered in response to a call from God.

 

Or one way we could have a play on words here is to say the church  is a community with a call upon it. It’s not that we’re being called out of this world into the next. Remember the redemption motif in the Hebraic scriptures is of a people that have been set free in order to live before the Lord in this world as His chosen elect people, bearing His name, walking in the light of His instruction, constructing a sanctuary for His dwelling. The church of God.

 

We find this, by the way, paralleled in the Hebrew scriptures. We know from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures dating to the second or third century B.C., that the corresponding term to ekklesia is the term kahal. And you get the term, for example, kahal El, “the assembly of God.”

 

Now what does this term kahal mean? Well, first of all it’s the term most often used in Israel today by Messianic congregations. You’ll hear it in the form of kehelat shalom, “the congregation, or the assembly, the church of peace.” Kehelat ha’Mashiach, “the assembly of the Messiah.”

 

What is a kahal? First of all it speaks of a quantitative emphasis upon all. It’s everybody who’s there. When it’s used in the scripture it includes Israelites, the sojourners, children, adults. When the call would go forth, such as the call of the shofar, everyone would assemble. It does have a particular spiritual slant because it’s the term used in the context of Sinai, the kahal of God. They are assembled to receive God’s instruction. In fact we find in Deuteronomy 9:10, for example, a reference (also 10:4) to “the day of the assembly.” And that’s in the context of the assembly of all the people — Israelites, sojourners, strangers, citizens, non-citizens — assembled for the covenant at Sinai.

 

So the first thing we can say, using the apostle Paul’s terminology, is that the call of God has assembled a people that is set apart for God; The church of God. It speaks of the totality of the assembly. But typically when Paul uses the term ekklesia he does so in particular ways, as the local church, it’s something living, it’s a house assembly of living stones animated by God’s Spirit. For Paul the church, is always a living, assembled congregation. Occasionally it has the broader context, the plural churches of Galatia, of Macedonia, or it can even speak of the body of Christ in the broad sense, all the churches of Christ, Romans 16:16. But more often than not it refers to a local congregation.

 

But the more important concept that is often missing in our discussions of the church is the concept we saw in Exodus 12:1 — the edah.  What is the edah and how does it differ from the kahal? In fact, edah was a favorite term in Second Temple Judaism for the people of Israel. We find it in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the analysis of scholars., Dr. Robert Lindsay and Professor David Flusser and others - experts in the Hebraic backgrounds to the gospels - have concluded that most likely the term that Yeshua used was not kahal but the term edah.

 

I will build my edah. And he does so because of the deep spiritual connections this has with the exodus from Egypt. It’s more than just an assembly that he’s constructing, it’s a congregation.

 

Let’s talk about edah. It comes from a word, a verb, ya’ad, “to appoint.” A moed, normally rendered, “a festival, or an appointed time,” or the moadim, “the appointed times of the Lord, the festivals of the Lord,” speaks of that which has been appointed. The festivals are appointed times to go up to Jerusalem. They are God’s appointments for His appointed people. And what are they called to do? They are called to assemble for some special purpose, such as Passover, to represent the exodus. They’re called, in a broader sense, to be witnesses unto God. In Isaiah repeatedly God says through the prophet “you are my witnesses.”

 

You see the word ed, means “a witness.” Every time we say the Shema, the last letter of the Shema in Hebrew manuscripts is always written larger than the other letters. And then we go on to say, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad. The last letter of the word echad, “the Lord is our God and He is one,” is the letter dalat. It also is written larger. Why? Because, say the sages, every time you say the Shema with kavanah, with “the intention” of hearing what it is God wants you to do - to love Him with all your heart, soul and strength - then you are His witness.

 

Edah is that witnessing community of faith. Now edah unlike kahal speaks not so much of quantity as of the quality of the assembly. It consisted only of Israelites not everybody who would assemble; it consists of the covenant people. The stress was not upon the totality of the assembly but upon the unity of the fellowship and the calling. Edah expresses the concept of corporateness. It emphasizes the whole, not the individual constituents of the whole. It represents the community as a people, the people of God.

 

Now this is very difficult for us to get our Western minds around. We’re so given to an orientation toward individualism and towards the world to come that we fail to adequately appreciate Yeshua’s orientation to corporateness and to the call of that corporate people in this world. “You will be my witnesses,” he is saying to his disciples.

 

Now Israel bears witness to the world that there is one God, the Father. And the church bears witness to the world that there is but one Lord, Jesus the Messiah. We are in some respects the two witnesses of the last day; covenant Israel, the covenant community of Christ. We bear witness that for us there is but one God, the Father and but one Lord, Jesus the Messiah. We are called to be the witnesses of God. We witness not just with our words but with our actions. The emphasis for Yeshua is upon the integrity, the unity, the character of this community. We are saved individually but not for individuality. We enter as individuals to be joined to a people. And if we can not grasp the corporateness and the priority of the people that God is in pursuit of, we will fail to understand the fulness of the calling that Christ has upon the church.

 

For we are more than just a citizens’ assembly to worship God. That’s good, but there’s more. We’re more than just an instrument to serve God in the world by witnessing to others that they are lost and they need God. That’s good, but there’s more. Yes, we are more than the kahal of God. We are the edat of Messiah. We are the corporate body, the community of faith unto Yeshua the Messiah. We are a people. As a people we have a plurality of needs and responsibilities, that’s why, as we will see, there will be appointed a plurality of elders, of deacons, of various functionaries. No, it’s not an issue of ecclesiastical offices with the root church, that’s a development of the third and fourth centuries. We’re talking about household functionaries meeting the diverse needs so that together we come up to maturity, to the full measure Messiah, whom we are now representing in the world.

 

So the term edah represents the covenant people of Israel as a whole. It’s more than just an assembly. In fact we have examples of where the term kahal and edah are used together. When it talks about the “assembly of the congregation of Israel.”

 

We are more than an assembly, we’re an army. We’re more than an organization, we’re an organism animated by the spirit of Messiah as living stones, says the apostle Peter. Interesting he should use that terminology. Peter himself, to the church, now consisting of both Gentiles and Jews, he says, “You are living stones. You are a holy nation. You are a kingdom of priests unto God.” All these high privileges of Israel are now being shared with the Gentiles (the non-Jews) in Messiah. We’re united, serving one God, under one Lord and we too are called to be the edah; the community of faith that bears witness to the living Lord, the risen Messiah, the one whom the gates of hell could not withstand.

 

By the way, I failed to mention to you when Jesus says the gates, (lit. “gates of the grave”), he’s alluding to spiritual powers and principalities. The elders of a city would sit at the gate and would welcome people coming in and permit them to come in or not. The elders would adjudicate. The spiritual authorities of those who oppose God are, in effect, at the gates of the grave and Jesus says, in effect; Their authority shall not supersede my authority, death cannot keep me down, and my church, my community of faith as a community, as a people, animated by my spirit, founded upon my instructions, given who I am, under the leadership of apostles and prophets and elders who serve as overseers and as shepherds—this community of faith is going to be built up into a holy sanctuary by God’s spirit so that God Himself can come and take up dwelling in the midst of His people.

 

Are you getting a sense of how wondrous, how diverse the dimensions of the church are? We’ve got to go back to the root church and those ancient paths of Israel and of God’s covenant with His people, for we have been joined to them.

 

Let us quickly summarize this session before we look at the other significant influence just behind Jesus’ use of the term “church.” I allude here to the concept of the synagogue. Two big factors—one, the Torah and those great traditions of ‘God in pursuit of a people and a place’ and two, the synagogues served as a model that the early church patterned itself after.

 

But before that we must understand the bigger picture that we are called to be more than a citizens’ assembly that’s received a call from God. We are called to be fashioned into a congregation with a holy calling, a spiritual purpose, made possible by the redemption out of Egypt - even the Egypt of sin and death - now enabled to walk before the Lord as an appointed people on an appointed mission. What is that mission? To be the body of Messiah in this world and by our acts of lovingkindness and service, by the animating power of the Spirit, by the advancing of God’s kingship, we bear witness to the world that, yes, there is one God, the Father and there is one Lord, Messiah Jesus. He is building his church and we are part of that witnessing community of faith.

 

Until next time...shalom.

 

© 2011 The Center for Judaic-Christian Studies.