From Judaism to Jesus, Part 2
Acts 18:24-28
. . . Acts chapter 18, and we're going through the Book of Acts and how our hearts have been blessed as we've studied this marvelous book. I'm just thrilled at what God has been doing in my own life and my own heart in helping to crystallize Biblical principals and review things for me and teach me things that I did not know, and my own heart has been so enriched and I hope and trust yours has.
Now, I've entitled this portion, beginning in chapter 18 verse 18 through chapter 19 verse 7, we've entitle it From Judaism to Jesus because it does portray for us a transition. We have made the mention in past studies that the Book of Acts records for us transitions and we see the fading out of Judaism and the coming in of Christianity. In understanding this, we have to understand that it sometimes was a slow transition. Salvation is not a transition; it's a momentary miracle. But losing all of the trappings of Judaism came a little slower. People would get saved and then find it hard to let go over everything, and so there was a certain amount of difficulty in making the transition from Judaism to Jesus. And as I said last week, we find that true very often today, even with Jews who come to Jesus Christ and find it difficult to break with patterns that were so much a part of Judaism.
Now, I think part of this is due to the fact, maybe most of it is due to the fact that Judaism in itself is such a distinct kind of life. Now, we could talk for a long time about the distinctions of Judaism and I don't mean to do that, but in some generality to point out to you the distinctness of Judaism, in order that you might understand how difficult the transition comes about.
For example, a Jewish town or a Jewish city or township or village, no matter whether it was centered right in the midst of a Pagan country or whether it was butted up against a Pagan society in another city, still maintained an amazing uniqueness, and no matter how much interrelation and intercourse economically and culturally and all it happened to have with Pagans, it seemed never to be tainted by Paganism. There was just such a unique identity and this was particularly around the time of Christ and the time of the New Testament.
You couldn't even enter a Jewish town or enter a Jewish village without feeling like you had almost stepped into another world. You get that feeling today when you go to Jerusalem, not so much when you see the hustle and bustle of a modern city, but when you happen to be isolated with a group, say, of Orthodox Jews who are doing what only Orthodox Jews do, you feel that somehow something's wrong. You're out of whack or they're out of whack with the world. It's just so different and so unique.
The buildings and streets, the arrangements of the houses, the styles of the houses were so prescribed in Judaism that you would spot a Jewish town immediately. And when you were to enter the town, you would find that the rules of municipal life as well as the rules of religious life were prescribed. You would fine the manners and the customs of the people so distinct. You would enter into the home and you find the behavior of the father, the mother and the children very unique. You would find the processes in the kitchen very unique. You would find the clothing very unique. You would find so many, many things that are so very singular to Judaism.
And I think the thing that you need to keep in mind is this, that Judaism was not just a religion. You know, when we think of a religion today, apart from us who are Christian, but when we think of a religion today, we get the idea of you do your own thing all week and then you go drift into some kind of religious gig on the weekend. You get it all squared away and bounce out of there and start all over again on Monday. And that's kind of what religion is. It's sort of an addendum. It's sort of a little divine salt to sprinkle on your secular diet and little else.
I think that, for most of us, we tend to look at religion in this frame. But Judaism was not such an isolated creed of theology. You see, it was a whole way of life. It pervaded every single human relationship. It pervaded every single attitude toward eating and drinking and clothing and all kinds of things in terms of economy, not just a set of observances, not just a creed, but a way of life and you could never just suck Jewish theology out and remove Judaism. No, because Judaism was a way of life. It was a frame in which everything existed.
It all really began, of course, because of the Old Testament. When God laid down, first of all, moral and ethical law and the Ten Commandments and God said the basis of your ethics and the basis of your morality is this code. But in addition to that, God wanted them to be a singular witness in the world so He gave them some other prescribed things that were not so ethical--some were ethical, but not all of them were ethical. Some of them were just plain old visual or external so that the world might see them as a unique people. And these were given, and you read the Old Testament. You find these also in the plenitude.
And so there were Old Testament laws in terms of morality. There were Old Testament laws in terms of relationships such as family relationships, cousins, uncles, aunts, fathers, mothers, kids, parents, the whole thing. There were relationships with other kinds of people apart from your own family. There were very many prescribed rules for touching on all phases of life.
Now, the thing that happened so interestingly was, in addition to the Old Testament, throughout the history of Israel, there have always been rabbis, which means teacher or master. And all of these rabbis were teaching and interpreting and adding to scripture. And, of course, the esteem of a rabbi was so great that what the rabbi said was often written down. And all of these things were gathered and gathered and accumulated until today, you have this monstrous set of volumes known as the Talmud. And the Talmud is all of these rabbinical statements added onto the Biblical, and you will find that if you visit any rabbi who was at all involved in what he ought to be involved in as a rabbi, you would find that he has not only prescribed his life around the Old Testament, but perhaps even more so around the Talmud where he is following up all of the interpretations and suggestions of all the rabbis, some of which, most of which are unnecessary and unbiblical.
In addition to that, there was the Mishnah, which was a codified law that grew up. And in addition to that, there were just plain traditions that just became a way of life. So, all of this stuff was just laid on generation after generation after generation, and were you to be born into a Jewish family, there was no way that would ever really be exposed to much else.
And in addition to that, God had set down a standard in the very beginning, in the Book of Deuteronomy chapter 6, called the Shimah, which says, "The Lord our God is one Lord." And then it goes on to say that the trues that this implies are to be taught to your children and their children and their children--in other words, repetitious teaching. And they were instructed to teach when they were sitting down, standing up, walking, lying, all the time.
So what happened? You had all of this prescription of life being propagated, propagated, propagated to every born child. They were taught in the home, for example. They were taught in the synagogue. They were taught in the temple, and in any town or any community were there 25 boys or 125 families, they had to appoint a schoolmaster and start a school and teach these things. And so there were schools all over everywhere. Someone said at the destruction of Jerusalem, there were between 400 and 500 such schools teaching children these basic things repetitiously.
Well, you see what happens is that eventually these things become just indelibly impressed into the minds of people. And so Judaism continued to foster this tremendous conglomerate way of living that was not isolated only in the area of theology, but it was an entire existence.
But at the core of this thing was the law, the ceremonies, the rituals that they had to keep and they believed--and this wasn't Old Testament by any stretch of the imagination--they believed that if they kept all those laws, they'd get into heaven. Now, God in the Old Testament was a gracious God. And people say, "Well, there's no grace in the Old Testament." Guess again. Who is a pardoning God like thee and who gives grace? And it goes on to talk about that. Read it. It's in the Old Testament, many places. God says in Malachi that He had a book of remembrance in which He writes the name of those who are righteous and those who believe in Him. And Abraham believed God. It was _________ righteousness.
Faith is still a way of salvation in the Old Testament as today. And what happened was the Jews supplanted faith with law, and by the time of Christ, they believed that the only way you'd get into heaven was by keeping the law. And, of course, the guys out in front leading the whole mob along were the Pharoses. They were hyper-zealous for the law and they tended to drag everybody after them.
Well, this had unbelievable consequences. Let me give you a couple illustrations. We could talk about many angles, but interesting. There was a rabbi by the name of Rabbi Jacanon Van Saccai. It was written of him that he said this at his death. And it was interesting because he was called The Light of Israel. He lived at the time of the destruction of the temple. He was a very famous man, highly esteemed. And he was the president of the San Hedron or the ruling body of Israel. So he was not a small-time rabbi, but a very important man. On his deathbed, he began to weep just bitterly and profusely, and some of his students who had studied under him and sat at his feet couldn't believe this.
And they asked him how such a man who had lived as he could have such fear of death, and this was his reply and I quote, "If I were now to be brought before an Earthly kind who lives today and dies tomorrow, whose wrath and whose bonds are not everlasting and whose sentence of death even is not that to everlasting death, who can be assuaged by arguments or perhaps bought off by money, I should still tremble and weep. How much more reason have I for it when about to be led before the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed by He who liveth and abideth forever, whose chains are chains forevermore, whose sentence of death kills forever, whom I cannot assuage with words nor bride with money and not only so, but there are before me two ways: one's a paradise and the other one to hell. And I know not which of the two ways I shall have to go. How then shall I not shed tears?" End quote. The man believed that there was only one to enter into heaven and that was to keep the law and he knew in his conscious that he hadn't done it, and he had a fear of spending forever in hell. You see, he had no concept of faith, no concept of grace. He was in a system that bound him and if he didn't do what the system wanted him to do, he believed he'd go to hell forever.
Now, when a system has that kind of grip, it's scary. Right? You always wondered why people who get into the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, stick with it, because they're told that if they don't, they'll go to hell. It's the same kind of hold exactly. The same thing that this kind if Judaism, not Biblical Judaism, but the kind of Judaism that existed in the day of Christ had on those people. They feared for their souls. And here was an honest man. Here was a man who came to the end of his life and according to the code; he knew he couldn't make it. And he died in mortal fear, his own soul.
Now, contrast that with the opposite extreme that grows under legalism, not the fear, but listen to this. There w